Chemical Element: bohrium

(Modern Latin: named for Niels Henrik Bohr (1885-1962), Danish physicist; radioactive metal)

Chemical-Element Information

Symbol: Bh
Atomic number: 107
Year discovered: 1981

Discovered by: Peter Armbruster, Gottfried Münzenberg, and their co-workers; at Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany.


  • Niels Bohr used to begin his lectures by saying to his students, “Every sentence that I utter should be regarded by you not as an assertion but as a question.”
  • Scientists from the USSR reported their production of an isotope of bohrium in 1976 and this work was substantiated later by German scientists.
  • This element was named in honor of Niels Henrik David Bohr, a Danish physicist, considered one of the foremost scientists of the 20th century.
  • It was previously named unnilseptium (Uns) which is the Latin equivalent of atomic number “107”.

Name in other languages:

French: bohrium

German: Bohrium

Italian: bohrio

Spanish: bohrio


Information about other elements may be seen at this Chemical Elements List.

A special unit about words that include chemo-, chem- may be seen here.