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THE ACCEPTANCE OF N E W OFFICIAL NAMES FOR THE ELEMENTS' CHARLES D. CORYELL Massachusetts Institute of Technoloqy, Cambridge, Massachusetts NATHAN SUGARMAN University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
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ATTHE XVth Conference of the International Union of Chemistry a t Amsterdam, Sept. 5-10, 1949, names2 were officially given to four missing elements and four transuranic elements, and conflicts in names or spelling of names were resolved for six elements. The action is summarized in Table 1. TABLE 1 New Official Names of Elements Element ORLeial name Svnbol Competitive Usage 4 Beryllium Be Glucinium (GI) in France 41 Niahium Nb Columbium (Cb) in the U. S. alone 43 Technetium Tc Masurium (Ma) 61 Promethium Pm Ilinium (11); Florentium 71 72 74
Lutetium Hafnium Wolfram
Lu Hf W
85 87
Astatine Francium Protactinium Neptunium Plutonium Americium Cunum
At Fr Pa
91 93 94 95 96
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Lutecium (Lu) in English Celtium (Ct) (rare) Tungsten (W) in English and th;? Romince languiges Alabsmine (Ab) (rare) Vireinium (Vi). (rare) , ~ro&actinium (Pa)
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The real test of the effectiveness of the recommendations of the Commission on Inorganic Nomenclature and the Commission on Atomic Weights of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and the test of the interest of scientists in normalizing nomenclature in fields of common use, mill be the speed and thoroughness of acceptance of the new names for elements known a long time. This resolves essentially into the elimination in France of the name glucinium in favor of beryllium, the elimination in the United States of the name columbium in favor of niobium (used elsewhere in the world including Britain), and the elimination in the English world and Latin world of tungsten and its linguistic variants in favor of wolfram. Special attention is drawn in Table 1to these last two changes. The authors of this paper are a t present completing the editing of a major collection of research material (33G separate papers)Yealing with the wartime work on the nuclear chemistry and analysis of the fission products, elements 30 through 64. An obligation was felt to support the new recommendations, particularly for niobium since this element plays an important part in the work; but it was not certain that American chemists and physicists would welcome an ex post facto rhanee in their manuscrints. The auestion of the change rras therefore put to vote to the 20 authors who have papers dealing importantly with niobium and to 35 other leading chemists and physicists, formerly or presently involved in the U. S. atomic energy program. The results of this ballot gave overwhelming support (46 to 4) for the officially proposed name niobium. Most of those who commented gave as a principal reason for their acceptance the principle that American scientists should give full support to international decisions democratically achieved. As a result of this action, it has been decided to use the word niobium exclusively for element 41 and wolfram exclusively for element 74 in the book, but to introduce in varentheses the previously accepted name (columbiuk or tungsten) the first time in apaper that the name for the element is It is recommended that all writers and teachers who support the revised nomenclature put it into use effec-
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There is little doubt of the universal acceptance of the names for the four elements apparently missing in nature (technetium and promethium now isolated in milligram quantities from the fission of uranium, and astatine and francium, both short-lived) or of the names for the four transuranic elements (neptunium, plutonium, americium, and curium) all of which were obtained in visible quantities as a result of the atomic energy program. The names of all of these eleme?ts were conferred following objective procedures outlined by Paneth3 in 1947. The discovery of hafnium is clearly established in the work of Hevesy and Coster4 and the competitive name celtium has fallen into disuse. 1 Editor's Note: It is some time since the &st announcement was made of these proposals of The International Union. Reacand the publication of this paper tion to them has been does not imply editorial approval or disapproval. We think, however, that the authors' point of view deserves to be presented, so that readers can form their own opinions. 1 Staff Report, Chem. Eng. News, 27,2996 (1949). s PANETH, F. A,, Natwe, 159,8 (1947). 4 COSTER, D., AND G. HEVESY, Nature, 111,79,182,252 (1923); HEVESY,G., Chem. Revs., 2,1(1925).
6 CORYELL, C. D., AND N. SUGARMAN, "Radiochemical Studies: The Fission Products," Vol. 9, Div. IV of the National Nuclear Energy Series, McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., New York, 1950.
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AUGUST, 1950
tively now. Editors of scientific publications could give the revised nomenclature strong support by requiring that the writer a t least cite the official proposals2 if he should decide against using them. The International Union has also asked for discussion of the desirability and feasibility of normalizing names
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of other elements whose roots vary among the modern languages to make the modem roots conform to the symbols (e. g., natrium Na, kalium K, aurum Au, etc.). Such a step cuts across more classical chemistry and affects more languages than the one reported here and should be discussed widely before being brought to vote.
