Yuri Oganessian visits Royal Society of Chemistry

We recently received a special guest at Burlington House. Yuri Oganessian, the discoverer of many chemical elements, and after whom the last element in the periodic table – oganesson – is named. 

Professor Oganessian came to Burlington House last year to attend a lunch discussion about the International Year of the Periodic Table. We showed him our installation of a Higgs & Crick periodic table – created before the later elements were named. We invited him to sign his name on element 118, then labeled ununoctium, symbol Uuo, and this is now displayed in the atrium at our other UK offices, at Thomas Graham House, in Cambridge.

On Friday 4 October, our deputy chief executive, Dr Helen Pain, showed Professor Oganessian the updated periodic table we have now installed at Burlington House, including the elements discovered by Yuri in his superheavy element lab at Dubna, in Russia.

We're very proud to say that Professor Oganessian – the only person on earth with an element named after them – completed our new version by re-signing his name on element 118.