Nipponium or the Story of a Might-have-been: Masataka Ogawa and the Vagaries of Chemical Research
On 1 December The Japan Times ran a headline, “With ‘nihonium,’ Japanese scientists become first from an Asian country to name atomic element.” The new element was artificially synthesized by a team of researchers at the government-backed Riken research institute and has 113 protons in its nucleus. The Japan Times did…