93rd Element?

Until 1220 when Alchemist Albertus Magnus discovered arsenic, mankind knew only ten elements--carbon, sulphur, gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, antimony and mercury. In the next 500 years alchemists discovered only bismuth, zinc and phosphorus. Then scientific chemistry began By 1900, before which time perspicacious Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyeff figured that there must be 92 elements on earth, no more, no less, chemists had isolated 83. Last discovery of a tangible element, which could be handled and weighed, occurred in 1926 when Professor B. Smith Hopkins of the University of Illinois found Element No. 61 among some rare earths and named it illinium (TIME, March 22, 1926). After illinium, which existed in too small quantities to be, put to commercial use, only No. 85 which must resemble iodine and No. 87 which must resemble cesium remained vacant in Mendeleyeff's Periodic Table.

Having exhausted the field of Nature as they knew it on earth, chemists and physicists started making artificial elements in their laboratories.

Last January the Curie-Joliots of Paris pegged alpha particles (helium nuclei) into boron nuclei and got nitrogen. Similarly magnesium became silicon; alumi-num--phosphorus.

The Curie-Joliot elements were all briefly radioactive, and all quickly returned to their original bases. The Curie-Joliot work proved that theorists have a pretty accurate understanding of how the atom works. By-&-by an engineer may use the information to make a steam engine run more efficiently. Metallurgists may make better kinds of stainless steel. Physiologists may prevent rickets and tooth decay, treat cancer.

Most assiduous imitator of the Curie-Joliots is Professor Enrico Fermi, 32, Italian physicist. Using neutrons instead of alpha particles or deutons, he has produced radioactive forms of two dozen elements from fluorine to barium.

One of the elements Professor Fermi played with last spring was uranium. Uranium, discovered in 1789, is the mother stuff of radium, and the heaviest element on earth (twice as heavy as tin). Astronomers believe that elements heavier than uranium must exist in the interior of the sun. Geologists admit that perhaps near the core of the earth may be something heavier than uranium. But there certainly has been none anywhere near the earth's surface where man can lay his hands on it--until possibly last week.

To the King of Italy and a group of Fascist physicists, one of Professor Fermi's admiring colleagues reported that, after wiping away a flood of electrons, he had smashed a batch of neutrons upon a piece of uranium which weighed 92 atomic units. For 13 1/2 min., while it sputtered electrons, the uranium weighed 93 units. According to the Mendeleyeff Table it had no scientific business weighing more than uranium. During that period, reasoned Professor Fermi, the substance must have been not uranium, but hypothetical Element No. 93.

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