Discovery of fermium

Fermium was discovered in December 1952, like einsteinium, in the radioactive fallout from the first hydrogen bomb test, Ivy Mike, at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific. A team at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Albert Ghiorso, with Glenn Seaborg, identified atoms of element 100 in the material gathered by aircraft from the clouds and from the coral at the test site. The finding was kept classified and announced in 1955. The element was named in honour of the Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi, who built the first nuclear reactor in Chicago in 1942. Fermium is a radioactive, synthetic metal that has been made only in very small amounts in reactors. It is the heaviest element that can be created by neutron bombardment.

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