The author in Red Square, Moscow, January 1984
1 March 2024
Moscovium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 115 and the symbol Mc. It is extremely radioactive, its longest-lived isotope has a half-life of less than a second. It has no applications other than pure research.
Element 115 was first synthesized in 2003 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia. But in 2016, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) awarded credit for the discovery to a collaborative project between JINR and the Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories in the United States. The name Moscovium was officially announced in a JINR press release of 6 January 2016, although undoubtedly there are earlier uses to be found in internal JINR papers and notes:
Regarding element 115, our proposal has been repeatedly announced; this is Moscovium that honors the Moscow Region as a whole (Moscow and Moscow Oblast)—the place where this research has been carried out and whose officials and organizations strongly contributed to its development (support of the Russian Academy of Sciences, grants of the Ministry for Education and Research of Russian Federation, of Rosatom, of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, of the Governors of the Moscow region B. V. Gromov and A. Yu. Vorobyov).
Dubna is in the Moscow Oblast, some 80 miles (125 kilometers) from the city.
IUPAC guidelines formulated in 2016 require new elements be named after either a mythological character or concept (or an astronomical object named after such a mythological concept), a mineral, a place, or a scientist. Elements in columns 1–16 of the periodic table take the usual suffix -ium. Those in column 17 take the suffix -ine, and those in column 18 the suffix -on. Moscovium is in column 15, hence the -ium ending. Of course, older names for elements may not conform to these guidelines.
Sources:
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR). “Discovery of the New Chemical Elements with Numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118” (press release), 6 January 2016.
Karol, Paul J., et al. “Discovery of the elements with atomic numbers Z = 113, 115 and 117 (IUPAC Technical Report).” Journal of Pure and Applied Chemistry, 88.1–2, 2016, 139–53. DOI: 10.1515/pac-2015-0502.
Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 3—Rivalry of Scientists in the Twentieth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 12 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09452-9.
Oganessian, Yuri Tsolakovich, et al. “Experiments on the Synthesis of Element 115 in the Reaction 243Am(48Ca,xn)291−x115.” Physical Review C, 69, 2 February 2004, 021601-1–5. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.69.021601.