A synthetic radioactive element with atomic number 97, named after the University of California at Berkeley where it was discovered.
Created in 1949 at Berkeley Lab and named to honor the university. Following the tradition of element naming, it combines the place name 'Berkeley' with the element suffix -ium.
Berkelium is one of the transuranic elements created in laboratories—it's so unstable it barely exists in nature, yet scientists named an element after a university, showing how fundamental physics discoveries deserve to honor their birthplace.
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