lawrencium
Synthesized, radioactive, metallic element, the last of the actinide series, atomic number 103, relative atomic mass 262. Its only known isotope, Lr-257, has a half-life of 4.3 seconds and was originally synthesized at the University of California at Berkeley in 1961 by bombarding californium with boron nuclei. The original symbol, Lw, was officially changed in 1963.
The element was named after Ernest Lawrence (1901–1958), the US inventor of the cyclotron.
| In 1992 the International Unions for Pure and Applied Chemistry and Physics (IUPAC and IUPAP) gave credit to Russian scientists in Dubna for the joint discovery of lawrencium. |
