Mendelevium is a synthetic element named after Dmitri Mendeleev, father of the periodic table.
Core Principles & Analysis
In 1955 Berkeley scientists produced just 17 atoms of mendelevium by bombarding roughly a billion einsteinium-253 atoms with alpha particles.
It was the first element synthesized and identified one atom at a time, using a recoil technique that flung the product atoms onto a catcher foil for separate counting.
Naming it for Dmitri Mendeleev, creator of the periodic table, was a pointed Cold War tribute by American scientists to a Russian; its most stable isotope, mendelevium-258, lives about 51.5 days.