Einsteinium

General DescriptionThe first isotope of this element having mass number 253 and half-life 20 days was detected in 1952 in the Pacific in debris from the first thermonuclear explosion. The isotope was an alpha emitter of 6.6 MeV energy, chemically analogous to the rare earth element holmium. Isotope 246, having a half-life 7.3 minutes, was synthesized in the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory cyclotron in 1954. The element was named Einsteinium in honor of Albert Einstein. Only microgram amounts have been synthesized. The element has high specific alpha activities. It may be used as a tracer in chemical studies. Commercial applications are few.

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.