Controversy
By convention, naming rights for newly discovered chemical elements go to their discoverers. However, for the elements 104, 105 and 106 there was a controversy between a Soviet laboratory and an American laboratory regarding which one had discovered them. Both parties suggested their own names for elements 104 and 105, not recognizing the other's name.
The American name of seaborgium for element 106 was also objectionable to some, because it referred to American chemist Glenn T. Seaborg who was still alive at the time this name was proposed. (Einsteinium and fermium had also been proposed as names of new elements while Einstein and Fermi were still living, but only made public after their deaths, due to Cold War secrecy.)
The USSR wanted to name element 104 after Igor Kurchatov, father of the Soviet atomic bomb, which was another reason the name was objectionable to the Americans.
Read more about this topic: Transfermium Wars
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)