Science: The Last Element

The last of the elements to be identified was isolated last week. Ever since bearded Russian Professor Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeléeff classified the probable chemical elements in 1869 and arranged them in the periodic table, scientists have looked for a fifth member of the halogen family: fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine. Now the hypothetical eka-iodine (i.e., next to iodine) has finally been isolated in Bern, Switzerland. Thus Mendeléeff's table has now been realized, substantially as he predicted, with 92 elements (unless there are others heavier than uranium, which chemists think unlikely).

Discoverers of the method...

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