• Included in the Scientific Posts List.
• However, there were a couple of elements earlier in the table where there were also no stable isotopes: technetium (#43) and promethium (#61).

Martin Winfree

December 11, 2012

Like most high schoolers, I spent chemistry class staring at the periodic table of the elements. (Remember “Meester Weelson, GK? 🙂 ) It was fun studying those numbers and recognizing some of the names and abbreviations and being puzzled by others. After awhile, I figured out that, when the atomic weight was in parentheses, all isotopes of that element, such as uranium (#92) were radioactive. That was true of every element beginning with polonium (#84); much later, radioactive polonium poisoning has become one of the preferred techniques for slow assassination by spies all over the world.
However, there were a couple of elements earlier in the table where there were also no stable isotopes: technetium (#43) and promethium (#61). As it happens, those two numbers had a lot of meaning for me back in high school: I was a big fan of Richard Petty, who drove racecars emblazoned with 43; and my favorite Bob Dylan album (still is probably) was Highway 61 Revisited. I always thought that was so cool of the universe to cooperate with me numerically!