Norwegian nuclear chemist
Torbjørn Sikkeland
Torbjørn Sikkeland was the Norwegian member of the Berkeley team that discovered lawrencium in 1961, completing the actinide series.
How Lawrencium was found
The team bombarded a few micrograms of californium with boron ions from the Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator. Atoms recoiling from the target were caught on a moving copper tape and carried past detectors.
They saw a new alpha activity with a half-life of a few seconds and assigned it to element 103. It was named after Ernest Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron.
Shared the credit
The discovery is credited jointly to these scientists.
Life and career
Sikkeland came to Berkeley from Norway and spent several years in Albert Ghiorso’s group studying reactions between heavy ions and actinide targets.
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1961.