mendelevium

mendelevium (Md), synthetic chemical element of the actinoid series of the periodic table, atomic number 101. It was the first element to be synthesized and discovered a few atoms at a time. Not occurring in nature, mendelevium (as the isotope mendelevium-256) was discovered (1955) by American chemists Albert Ghiorso, Bernard G. Harvey, Gregory R. Choppin, Stanley G. Thompson, and Glenn T. Seaborg at the University of California, Berkeley, as a product resulting from the helium-ion (alpha-particle) bombardment of a minute quantity (about a billion atoms) of einsteinium-253 (atomic number 99). The element was named after Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev.

In about a dozen repetitions of the experiment, the team of scientists produced 17 atoms of mendelevium, which were identified by the ion-exchange adsorption-elution method (mendelevium behaved like its rare-earth homologue thulium) and by the electron-capture decay of its daughter isotope fermium-256. Fifteen other isotopes of mendelevium, all radioactive, have been discovered. The stablest is mendelevium-258 (51.5-day half-life). Studied by means of radioactive tracer techniques, mendelevium exhibits a predominant +3 oxidation state, as would be expected by its position in the actinoid series; a slightly stable +2 oxidation state is also known.