Albert Ghiorso was an American nuclear scientist and co-discoverer of a record 12 chemical elements on the periodic table. His research career spanned six decades, from the early 1940s to the late 1990s.
Ghiorso updates a periodic table in 1961 with the newly discovered element lawrencium while co-discoverers Robert Latimer, Torbjorn Sikkeland and Almon Larsh look on.
Americium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Am and atomic number 95. It is radioactive and a transuranic member of the actinide series in the periodic table, located under the lanthanide element europium and was thus named after the Americas by analogy.
The 60-inch cyclotron at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, in August 1939
Americium was detected in the fallout from the Ivy Mike nuclear test.
Outside and inside view of an americium-based smoke detector