Elementary, My Dead Watson

Albert Ghiorso, name-dropping, periodic table expanding nuclear physicist, has died of heart failure at the age of 95. Ghiorso specialized in identifying those elements that last for a fraction of a second and have no practical application other than to substantiate grant requests to fund efforts to find the next transient element. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1937, Ghiorso invented the world’s first commercial Geiger counter, which earned him a spot on the Manhattan Project, where he started his elemental Easter egg hunt with Americium (95) and Curium (96). After raining death on the Japanese, Ghiorso continued tampering in God’s domain, slamming particles together long enough to create Berkelium (97) and Californium (98), combing the mushroom cloud from the first thermonuclear explosion to find Einsteinium (99) and Fermium (100), then using a cyclotron to build Mendelevium (101) piece by piece. He led the group that used the first Ion Accelerator to create a few atoms each of Nobelium (102), Lawrencium (103), Rutherfordium (104), Dubnium (105) and Seaborgium (106), giving him 12 elements to his credit in less than 30 years, more than anyone in history. While moonlighting at Oscar Mayer laboratories, Ghiroso also isolated Bolognium, but to maintain his cover, was unable to add it to his curriculum vitae. Having shot his nuclear wad, he left it to others to continue using his techniques to find other made-up elements. He was briefly honored by having element 118 named Ghiorsium, but it turns out it was just dandruff.