Livermore on Thursday achieved a new degree of lasting fame when an international body officially approved Livermorium as the name for element 116 with the symbol Lv.
Livermorium honors Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and the city of Livermore, the lab announced in a news release.
At the same time, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry officially agreed that element 114 would be called Flerovium, noted as Fl.
The name honors the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, about 80 miles north of Moscow, where superheavy elements, including element 114, were synthesized. Georgiy N. Flerov (1913-1990) was a physicist who discovered the spontaneous fission of uranium.
The two names were proposed by scientists at the laboratories who collaborated in the discovery work.
Livmore Lab scientists have researched heavy elements since the Laboratory's inception in 1952 and have been involved in the discovery of six elements -- 113, 114, 115, 116, 117 and 118.