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Thislist of chemical elements named after people includeselements named for people both directly and indirectly. Of the 118 elements, 19 are connected with the names of 20 people. 15 elements were named to honor 16 scientists (ascurium honours bothMarie andPierre Curie). Four others have indirect connection to the names of non-scientists.[1] Onlygadolinium andsamarium occur in nature; the rest areman-made.
These 19 elements are connected to the names of people.Seaborg andOganessian were the only living persons honored by having elements named after them; Oganessian is the only one still alive. Names were proposed to honorEinstein andFermi while they were still alive, but they had both died by the time those names became official.[2]
The four elements associated with non-scientists were not named in their honor but named for something else bearing their name:samarium for the mineralsamarskite from which it was isolated; andamericium,berkelium andlivermorium after places named for them. The cities ofBerkeley, California andLivermore, California are the locations of theUniversity of California Radiation Laboratory andLawrence Livermore National Laboratory, respectively.
Other element names connected with people (real or mythological) have been proposed but failed to gain official international recognition. The following such names received past significant use among scientists:
Names had also been suggested (but not used) to honourHenri Becquerel (becquerelium) andPaul Langevin (langevinium).[4][5]George Gamow,Lev Landau, andVitalii Goldanski [ru] (who was alive at the time) were suggested for consideration for honoring with elements during theTransfermium Wars, but were not actually proposed.[2]
(See the article onelement naming controversies andList of chemical elements named after places.)
Also, mythological entities have had a significant impact on the naming of elements.Helium,titanium,selenium,palladium,promethium,cerium,europium,tantalum,mercury,thorium,uranium,neptunium andplutonium are all given names connected to mythological characters. With some, that connection is indirect:
Titanium is unique in that it refers toa group of deities rather than any particular individual. So Helios, Selene, Pallas, andPrometheus actually have two elements named in their honor.
And for elements given a name connected with a group, there is alsoxenon, named for theGreek wordξένον (xenon), neuter singular form ofξένος (xenos), meaning 'foreign(er)', 'strange(r)', or 'guest'.[6][7]Its discovererWilliam Ramsay intended this name to be an indication of the qualities of this element in analogy to the generic group of people.
Gallium was discovered by French scientistPaul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who named it in honor of France ("Gallia" in Latin); allegations were later made that he had also named it for himself, as "gallus" is Latin for "le coq", but he denied that this had been his intention.[8]
В свою очередь, российские физики предлагают свой вариант – ланжевений (Ln) в честь известного французского физика-теоретика прошлого столетия Ланжевена.
