Chemical Element: nobelium

(Modern Latin: chemical element; named in honor of Alfred Nobel; the discovery was made at the Nobel Institute; radioactive metal)

Chemical-Element Information

Symbol: No
Atomic number: 102
Year discovered: 1958

Discovered by: Albert Ghiorso (born July 15, 1915), Torbjorn Sikkeland, J. R. Walton, and Glenn Theodore Seaborg (1912-1999), American physicist, on the basis of an experiment performed at the University of California, Berkeley.


  • A team working in Stockholm reported, in 1957, an isotope whose atomic number is 102. They named the element nobelium after Alfred Nobel.
  • In 1958, a group at Berkeley, California, reported that they were unable to reproduce this work, findings agreed to by a Russian group at Dubna.
  • An authenticated discovery of nobelium was made in 1958 by Seaborg and others at Berkeley, California.
  • Nobelium is a radioactive “rare earth metal” named for Alfred Nobel who discovered dynamite.

Name in other languages:

French: nobélium

German: Nobelium

Italian: nobelio

Spanish: nobelio


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.