Definition of "rutherfordium" [rutherfordium]

• An artificially produced radioactive element with atomic number 104 whose most long-lived isotopes have mass numbers of 253, 255, 257, and 259 with half-lives of 1.8, 1.6, 4.7, and 3.4 seconds, respectively. See Table at element. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Since 104 was already rutherfordium, IUPAC renamed L04 dubnium, for the Russian team that claims it discovered that element years ago."
• "But in a fit of regionalism, Europeans running the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry named 106 rutherfordium, for the British father of the atom."
• "Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California saw the isotopes of rutherfordium, seaborgium, hassium, darmstadtium, and copernicium by watching the decay of the yet-to-be-named element 114, a synthetic element first produced about a decade ago."