Rutherfordium
Rutherfordium is the first element after the actinide series, and the first of the entirely synthetic "superheavy" elements made atom by atom in particle accelerators. Its discovery and naming became one of the most contested episodes in the periodic table's history, and it has no practical use beyond fundamental physics research.
- Group · Period
- 4 · 7
- At room temp
- solid
- Melts at
- Not yet available
- Density
- Not yet available
- Discovered
- 1964
Uses
Rutherfordium has no practical use. It’s synthesized only a few atoms at a time in particle accelerators, exists for at most a couple of minutes before decaying, and is far too rare and unstable for any application beyond pure research. Its value to scientists lies in testing predictions about how superheavy elements should behave chemically, part of a broader effort to understand where the periodic table’s patterns start to break down.
History
Rutherfordium was reported by researchers at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna in 1964 and, separately, by a team at Berkeley in 1969, with each side crediting a different set of experiments as the true discovery. That disagreement, and the competing element names each side proposed, became one of the defining disputes of the so-called Transfermium Wars, a Cold War-era standoff over credit for several new elements that international chemistry organizations didn’t fully resolve until the 1990s. The name rutherfordium, honoring Ernest Rutherford, was formally adopted in 1997.
Fun facts
- Rutherfordium's name was one of the most fiercely contested in periodic table history, part of what's now called the 'Transfermium Wars.'
- It's the first element after the actinide series, marking the start of the row where 6d electron orbitals begin to fill.
- Its most stable known isotopes last only tens of seconds to a couple of minutes — long by the standards of the elements that follow it.
Frequently asked questions
Does rutherfordium have any practical use?
No, it has no commercial or industrial application. It's made only one atom at a time in particle accelerators and studied purely to test predictions about how chemistry behaves at the far end of the periodic table.
What were the 'Transfermium Wars'?
During the Cold War, laboratories in the United States and the Soviet Union both claimed to have discovered several elements around rutherfordium, including this one, and each side proposed its own name. The resulting decades-long dispute over discovery credit and naming rights, eventually resolved by international chemistry bodies in the 1990s, became known informally as the Transfermium Wars.
Who is rutherfordium named after?
Ernest Rutherford, the physicist whose experiments revealed the structure of the atomic nucleus and laid the foundations of nuclear physics.
Isotopes
13 known isotopes
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| Isotope | Natural abundance | Half-life | Decay mode | Mass excess | Binding energy / nucleon | Decay width |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rf-261 | — | 68 s | Alpha decay (100%) | 101,318.23 keV | 7,371.39 keV | 6.71 × 10-18 eV |
| Rf-263 | — | 10 m | Alpha decay (30%), Spontaneous fission | 104,757 keV | 7,364 keV | 7.60 × 10-19 eV |
| Rf-267 | — | 1.3 h | Spontaneous fission (100%), Alpha decay (33.3%) | 113,444 keV | 7,342 keV | 9.75 × 10-20 eV |
Show all 13 isotopes
| Rf-253 | — | 9.9 ms | Spontaneous fission (83%), Alpha decay (17%) | 93,642 keV | 7,380 keV | 4.61 × 10-14 eV |
| Rf-254 | — | 23.2 us | Spontaneous fission (100%), Alpha decay (1.5%) | 93,201 keV | 7,384 keV | 1.97 × 10-11 eV |
| Rf-255 | — | 1.68 s | Spontaneous fission (58%), Alpha decay (42%), Electron capture / beta-plus decay (1%) | 94,329 keV | 7,382 keV | 2.72 × 10-16 eV |
| Rf-256 | — | 6.67 ms | Spontaneous fission (99.68%), Alpha decay (0.32%) | 94,221.99 keV | 7,385.43 keV | 6.84 × 10-14 eV |
| Rf-257 | — | 4.4 s | Alpha decay (79.3%), Electron capture (19.4%), Spontaneous fission (1.3%) | 95,866.39 keV | 7,381.71 keV | 1.04 × 10-16 eV |
| Rf-258 | — | 12.0 ms | Spontaneous fission (95.1%), Alpha decay (4.9%) | 96,344.34 keV | 7,382.53 keV | 3.80 × 10-14 eV |
| Rf-259 | — | 2.4 s | Alpha decay (92%), Electron capture (15%), Spontaneous fission (8%) | 98,367 keV | 7,377 keV | 1.90 × 10-16 eV |
| Rf-260 | — | 21 ms | Spontaneous fission (100%) | 99,148 keV | 7,377 keV | 2.17 × 10-14 eV |
| Rf-262 | — | 2.3 s | Spontaneous fission (100%) | 102,392 keV | 7,370 keV | 1.98 × 10-16 eV |
| Rf-265 | — | 1.0 m | Spontaneous fission (100%) | 108,690 keV | 7,354 keV | 7.60 × 10-18 eV |