Rutherfordium (Rf)

Isotopes of Rutherfordium

Rutherfordium is a synthetic element that is not present in the environment. It was reportedly first detected in 1964 at the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, Dubna, former Soviet Union. It was synthesized in 1969 at the University of California - Berkeley, USA. It was initially proposed that the element be named after Igor Kurchatov (1903–1960), a Soviet nuclear physicist who is remembered as “the father of the Soviet atomic bomb.” After some controversy concerning competing claims of discovery, the element was eventually named after Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937), a British-New Zealand chemist and physicist who became known as “the father of nuclear physics.”

Researchers have concluded that rutherfordium's basic properties will resemble those of other group 4 elements below titanium, zirconium and hafnium. It is expected to be a solid under normal conditions and to assume a hexagonal close-packed crystal structure, similar to its lighter congener hafnium, and it should be a very heavy metal. Rutherfordium has no stable or naturally-occurring isotopes. Several radioactive isotopes have been synthesized in the laboratory, either by fusing two atoms or by observing the decay of heavier elements.

Properties of Rutherfordium