Sunday Rest: seaborgium. Word Not To Use Today.

What's seaborgium?

Is it some part-mechanical part-animal collective, possibly involved in deep-water mining with the aim of taking over the world?

Well, no, seaborgium is nothing to do with the word cyborg, as it happens; it is something futuristic and rather alarming, though.

Seaborgium is a transuranic element, atomic number 106, symbol Sg, which was discovered in 1974. It doesn't occur naturally, and for this reason no one can be sure exactly what its properties are.

It was named after Eric Seaborg:



who didn't discover it.

I'm not the first to wonder if seaborgium is the ideal name for an element. The International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry stamped on the original suggestion of calling element 106 seaborgium because the Nobel prize-winner Eric Seaborg was still alive at the time, and it was decided that no element could be named after a living person.

That made all hell break loose among those of Seaborg's friends who had discovered the thing (Seaborg himself was an old and much-respected man who had earlier discovered plutonium, curium, and americium). Seaborg himself pointed out that 'This would be the first time in history that the acknowledged and uncontested discoverers of an element are denied the privilege of naming it.'

In the end the American Chemical Society, possibly tired of checking under their cars for nuclear devices and screening their tea for radioactivity, gave in. Their statement said:

In the interest of international harmony...we are pleased to note that 'seaborgium' is now the internationally approved name for element 106.

Is this the only word ever coined in the interests of international harmony?

Eric Seaborg died, tickled pink, in 1999.

But I still don't think seaborgium is really the ideal name for an element.

Ericium, though, would have been lovely.