From poisoned monks and nuclear bombs to the “transfermium wars,” mapping the atomic world hasn’t been easy.
New Yorker.

The story of the fifteenth element began in Hamburg, in 1669. The unsuccessful glassblower and alchemist Hennig Brandt was trying to find the philosopher’s stone, a mythical substance that could turn base metals into gold. Instead, he distilled something new. It was foamy and, depending on the preparation, yellow or black. He called it “cold fire,” because it glowed in the dark. Interested parties took a look; some felt that they were in the presence of a miracle. “If anyone had rubbed himself all over with it,” one observer noted, “his whole figure would have shone, as once did that of Moses when he came down from Mt. Sinai.” Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry, put some on his hand and noted how “mild and innocent” it seemed. Another scientist saw particles in it twinkling “like little stars.”

[. . .]

Mendeleev.. yet another Pivotal brilliant-One--his name unbekannt-to: the billions of those whose comfy-lives could not have happened without his Imagination + Insights. And so it ---> goes. (Ditto: 'Hypatia', 'The Weimar Republic' and a jillion other factoids "we thought everybody knew about". Eh?