Seaborgium

Seaborgium is element 106. A team from Berkeley and Livermore, led by Albert Ghiorso, made it in 1974 by firing oxygen nuclei at californium. It is named after Glenn Seaborg, who helped discover plutonium and many other heavy elements. Unusually, Seaborg was still alive when the name was approved in 1997.

Seaborgium is made only a few atoms at a time, and they last minutes at most. Even so, chemists have managed to study it, catching single atoms as they form compounds. Like the elements above it, molybdenum and tungsten, seaborgium forms a volatile compound with oxygen and chlorine, confirming its place in the periodic table.