Capture of 102

Excerpt from the book "Into the past through thoughts"

The idea behind our experiments was extremely simple. We needed to fuse atoms (or rather, nuclei) of uranium (No. 92) with atoms of neon (No. 10). The result would be element 102. Such is the simple arithmetic of modern alchemy. In reality, the experiments were very complex. To fuse the two atoms, we needed to accelerate the neon atoms in our accelerator to near-light speed - only then could they overcome Coulomb repulsion. But even if fusion did occur, it mostly resulted in the disintegration of the composite atom, seething with the energy introduced into it. Out of 100 million such atoms, only one would survive. We needed to design original equipment and to develop techniques to meet this problem.

My colleagues were Zhenya Donets, our leader and Vitya Ermakov, a chemist. A few words about them.

Zhenya is a born physicist. I was always amazed by his ability to penetrate the essence of phenomena. Sometimes, it seemed as if he, in his imagination, transformed into the atom we were trying to obtain and he could sense the atom's sensations, its reactions to the environment and surrounding influences. This ability greatly helped us to find the right solution. Later, Zhenya left FLNR after falling out with Flerov, took up plasma physics and made an important invention, known in the literature as the Donets source.

Discoverers of 102: E.D.Donets, V.A.Ermakov, V.A.Shchegolev

Vitya Ermakov was a very talented chemist. His results on transuranic chemistry that we took for granted back then, were later impossible to duplicate by entire institutes. His example convinced me that chemistry is not only a science but also an art. He explained his unique achievements simply: you need to wash dishes properly. He was unshakably convinced that all failures in chemistry stem from dirty dishes. He washed them himself, not trusting the laboratory assistants, several times, with chromate and afterwards, locked them in a cabinet.

Vitya will also leave us. After his wife's death, he moved to Melekess (at present, Dimitrovgrad) and worked at a major radiochemical centre. His life was tragically cut short in January, 2004.

And so, we built this "homemade" device - I can't call it anything else (by some miracle, it survived in our museum). Everything was done hastily, from sketches, on intuition. A target for 102.

And finally, in 1963, we finally obtained this element that lived for seconds and it was a sensation. Firstly, because the theory of nuclear fission had to be revised. Secondly, there was the purely political effect - the first transuranic element was discovered in the Soviet Union; before that, everything had been done by the Americans. We managed to synthesize only a few dozen atoms of element 102. But that wasn't the hardest part. We had to definitively prove that these few dozen belonged to element 102. It required us to apply all our ingenuity, creativity and wit, while at the same time adhering to all the requirements of impeccable scientific proof. I'm proud that we accomplished this task brilliantly.

The press was buzzing and we became heroes. Journalist Yaroslav Golovanov wrote a long article "In the firebird's nest" in "Komsomolskaya Pravda" and later, newspapers covered it. We became very famous and were invited on television.

It's hard to describe the elation which we did this work with. We sometimes worked for 36 hours straight, without leaving the laboratory. Genuine inspiration. The enchanting knowledge that you were about to be the first to see something no one had ever seen before... Annoyance at the failures that occurred... Doubts: did you do everything right? And the joy of victory!

Afterwards, using the same technique, we discovered element 103. Of course, we wanted to name the elements after themselves, but we weren't allowed to.

The public response to our discovery was deafening. We were showered with unprecedented fame. All the major newspapers published extensive articles about the event. We were presented as gingerbread heroes and the event itself was presented as epochal. It was practically our first live broadcast on the TV programme "Vremya"... My family archive contains evidence of this journalistic bacchanalia. Two documentaries were made: one by director Sobolev of "Kyivnauchfilm" and the other - by Igor Kolovsky, titled "Physicists". I especially like this one for its originality, lyricism and insight into something hidden.

Today, with the wisdom of life, I understand that it wasn't a spontaneous display of journalistic delight. We simply laid the egg at the right time for Easter. The fact is that at that very time, the USSR, the USA and Great Britain were going to sign the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, Outer Space and Under Water. The godfather of transuranics, the famous Glenn Seaborg that served as Chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission under President Kennedy, came to Moscow for the signing of the Treaty. Under Seaborg, elements from 93 to 101 were synthesized in the US in the 1940s and 1950s. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for this research. Element 106 is named seaborgium in his honor: Sg.

We hit the nail on the head with our discovery - we needed to show the Americans that we weren't just slobs. Apparently, the Central Committee issued a directive to promote our achievement to the fullest that is exactly what was done. Subsequently, equally significant scientific discoveries were made in our laboratory but they found no proper press coverage.

I'll tell you another informative story. It concerns what's called political physics. It so happened that the discovery of new chemical elements and their naming became a matter of national prestige from the very beginning. Americans attached particular importance to it, emphasizing the primacy of their science. The periodic table of elements is a fundamental act of human knowledge. It is destined to endure for centuries and millennia and perhaps, the names of the elements will be the only witnesses of our time.