Einsteinium

HistoryThe name of Es derives from “Albert Einstein”, the Geituan born physicist who proposed the theory of relativity. A collaboration of American scientists G. R. Choppin, S. G. Thompson, A. Ghiorso, and B. G. Harvey, from the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois, the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico and at the University of California lab in Berkeley, CA, first found 252Es in the radioactive debris from the first large thermonuclear bomb explosion, nicknamed “Mike,” which took place at Enewetak atoll, Marshall Islands in the Pacific on November 1, 1952. The longest halflife associated with this unstable element is 472 day 252Es.