Wednesday, June 8, 2016

New Element Named After Tennessee

I couldn't let the day pass without noting that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, which certifies the names of newly-discovered elements, has recommended that element 117 bear the name of "tennessine,"  in honor of the joint discovery of this element through work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee, and the efforts of two of my colleagues here at Vanderbilt.

After final approval, Tennessee will become only the second U.S. state to have an element named after it (take that, California!) Of course, the obscure Swedish village of Ytterby has four elements named after it (ytterbium, yttrium, terbium, and erbium), so we still have a long way to go before we catch up.

3 comments:

Kathy said...

So titanium isn't named after Tennessee (or was it New York)? ;)

Robert Scherrer said...

The stories behind many of the names of elements are quite fascinating. Isaac Asimov wrote several short science articles on the topic.

Priya Palande said...

Way to go! Congratulations to your colleagues at Vanderbilt...