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elements and mortality



The previously proposed names for elements 105 (joliotium) and
108 (hahnium) were dropped from the list.

And (I'm pleased to see) Seaborgium was restored. Imagine the
insult which was delivered to this greatest of all transuranium
element discoverers when the IUPAC proposed removing his name
from their recommendations because he had committed the offense
of living to a ripe old age!

I also noted in the news that Robert Dicke of Princeton died
yesterday at the age of eighty. Dicke was insulted by the Nobel
committee when they awarded the Prize to Penzias and Wilson for
discovering by accident what Dicke had predicted and was seeking
with more modest equipment. Dicke was ultimately responsible for
explaining to them what they were seeing after an associate of
his heard about Penzias and Wilson's "noise problem". One rumor
has it that if Dicke were to be included, Peebles would also
have to be included, and the Nobel can go to no more than three
people, so the engineers got it instead of the scientists.

I am presently a member of only *one* committee, a result of my
spending a year on leave. I'll try to see that committee does
not do anything really stupid. I will likely fail.

Leigh