Russian nuclear physicist · born 1933
Yuri Oganessian
Yuri Oganessian led the experiments that completed the seventh row of the periodic table. His team at Dubna, near Moscow, made elements 114 to 118, and in 2016 element 118 was named oganesson in his honour, making him only the second living person to have an element named after him.
- Elements credited
- 5
- Discoveries
- 1998–2010
- Co-discoverers
- 0
- Where
- Russia; Russia and United States
Discovery timeline
1998 · Russia
Flerovium is a synthetic superheavy element. Experiments suggest it is a volatile metal.
2000 · Russia and United States
Livermorium is a synthetic superheavy element made by fusing curium with calcium.
2002 · Russia and United States
Oganesson is the heaviest element known. Though in the noble gas group, it is predicted to be a reactive solid.
2003 · Russia and United States
Moscovium is a synthetic superheavy element made by fusing americium with calcium.
2010 · Russia and United States
Tennessine is a synthetic superheavy element in the halogen group. It was the most recently discovered element.
The discoveries
In the 1970s Oganessian developed the cold-fusion technique, firing medium-weight ions at lead and bismuth targets, which GSI later used to find elements 107 to 112. By the 1990s that method was running out of steam, so he switched to a different approach: “hot fusion” using a beam of calcium-48.
Calcium-48 is rare and expensive, but it carries a large surplus of neutrons, and neutron-rich superheavy nuclei live longer. Fired at targets of plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium and californium, it produced flerovium in 1998, livermorium in 2000, oganesson in 2002, moscovium in 2003 and tennessine in 2010.
Most of these experiments were joint work with Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge national laboratories in the United States, which supplied the rare actinide targets. The berkelium for tennessine was made in a reactor at Oak Ridge and flown to Russia before it could decay.
Life and career
Oganessian was born in Rostov-on-Don to an Armenian family and studied at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute. In 1956 he joined Georgy Flerov’s group, which soon became the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, and he later served as its director.
He has spent his whole career there, and remains its scientific leader. The lab’s results are the strongest evidence yet for the “island of stability”, a predicted region where superheavy nuclei survive much longer than their neighbours.
Also known for
- Developed both the cold-fusion and the calcium-48 hot-fusion methods
- Evidence for the island of stability
- Oganesson, element 118, named in his honour