Rutherfordium is a synthetic chemical element named after Ernest Rutherford.
Core Principles & Analysis
Competing claims from Dubna in 1964 and Berkeley in 1969 fed a decades-long dispute; Soviet scientists called element 104 'kurchatovium' before IUPAC settled on rutherfordium, honoring Ernest Rutherford, in 1997.
It is the first transactinide element, with known isotopes ranging from milliseconds up to rutherfordium-267, whose half-life is on the order of an hour.
Atom-at-a-time gas chromatography on rutherfordium-261 atoms surviving barely a minute showed the element forms a volatile tetrachloride like hafnium's, confirming its group-4 chemistry.