Astatine College Essay Example

of the element was made by Fred Allison, the same researcher who also erroneously claimed that he had discovered element 87.

And Just as in the case of element 87. Allison claimed to have found the new element using his own magneto-optical method, involving a time delay in the Faraday effect, which is to say the rotation of plane polarized light carried out by the application of a magnetic field to any particular solution of a substance. Allison published articles in 1931 and 1932 claiming that he had observed element 85 and proposing to call it alabamium after Alabama, the state in which he worked.

In 1935, the American physicist H. G. MacPherson showed that Allison's findings were purious and due to imperfections in his instruments rather than to the presence of a new element Further refutations followed in quick succession. tOf2 part of British India and now in Bangladesh. De had trained in Germany with Hahn and Meitner in the 1920s and like Allison, used monazite sand for his research. After applying a number of chemical processes to the sand, De obtained a sublimate that he claimed to be element 85 and to which he gave the name of dakin after the city of Dacca, also spelled Dhaka.

Later researchers dismissed De's claim on the basis of the owerful radioactivity of astatine, which would have prevented him or anybody else from safely handling the element in the manner he claimed to have done at the time. Another person who had been involved in the search for element 87, Romanian Horia Hulubei, was also involved in the discovery of element 85. Indeed it appears that he may well have

been the discoverer of naturally occurring astatine, as it was later called by the physicists who synthesized the element artificially. It is these physicists who are generally accorded with the discovery of the element.