Lawrencium is a synthetic chemical element named in honor of Ernest Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron.
Core Principles & Analysis
Lawrencium was first made at Berkeley in 1961 by Albert Ghiorso's team using boron-ion bombardment of californium and named for Ernest O. Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron.
Its longest-lived known isotope, lawrencium-266, with a half-life of about 11 hours, was identified only in 2014 as a decay product in the synthesis chains of tennessine.
A 2015 measurement of lawrencium's unexpectedly low first ionization energy reignited debate over whether lutetium and lawrencium, or lanthanum and actinium, belong in group 3 of the periodic table.