Neptunium - History

History

The periodic table of Dmitri Mendeleev published in the 1870s showed a " — " in place after uranium similar to several other places for at that point undiscovered elements. Also, a 1913 publication of the known radioactive isotopes by Kasimir Fajans shows the empty place after uranium.

At least three times, discoveries of the element 93 were falsely reported, as bohemium and ausonium in 1934, and then sequanium in 1939. The name neptunium had previously been considered for germanium.

The search for element 93 in minerals was encumbered by the fact that the predictions on the chemical properties of element 93 were based on a periodic table which lacked the actinide series, and therefore placed thorium below hafnium, protactinium below tantalum, and uranium below tungsten. This periodic table suggested that element 93, at that point often named eka-rhenium, should be similar to manganese or rhenium. With this misconception it was impossible to isolate element 93 from minerals, although neptunium was later found in uranium ore, in 1952.

Enrico Fermi believed that bombarding uranium with neutrons and subsequent beta decay would lead to the formation of element 93. Chemical separation of the new formed elements from the uranium yielded material with low half-life, and, therefore, Fermi announced the discovery of a new element in 1934, though this was soon found to be mistaken. Soon it was speculated and later proven that most of the material is created by nuclear fission of uranium by neutrons. Small quantities of neptunium had to be produced in Otto Hahn's experiments in late 1930s as a result of decay of 239U. Hahn and his colleagues experimentally confirmed production and chemical properties of 239U, but were unsuccessful at isolating and detecting neptunium.

Neptunium (named for the planet Neptune, the next planet out from Uranus, after which uranium was named) was discovered by Edwin McMillan and Philip H. Abelson in 1940 at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley. The team produced the neptunium isotope 239Np (2.4 day half-life) by bombarding uranium with slow moving neutrons. It was the first transuranium element produced synthetically and the first actinide series transuranium element discovered.