Talk:Protactinium

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Good articleProtactinium has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Did You Know Article milestones
DateProcessResult
November 30, 2010Peer reviewReviewed
April 30, 2011Good article nomineeListed
September 29, 2014Good topic candidatePromoted
February 15, 2024Good topic removal candidateDemoted
Did You Know A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on December 6, 2010.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that in 1926, Lise Meitner (pictured), a co-discoverer of protactinium, became Germany's first female full professor in physics?
Current status: Good article

Discovery[edit]

Pubchem states that " IUPAC who officially named it protactinium and confirmed Hahn and Meitner as co-discoverers". The infobox and text says different. What to do? (and: what means 'co-discoverers': the two together or 'co' with Fajan and Gohring?). -DePiep (talk) 19:41, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@DePiep: With these radioelements there tends to be a conflation between discovering the isotope and the element. In the past the most stable isotope gave the element its name, thus causing the confusion. Hahn and Meitner were the first to discover 231Pa; in the past, "protactinium" also meant this isotope as well as the element. But Fajans and Göhring had discovered 234Pa years before.
A similar confusion goes on with radon. The most stable isotope, 222Rn, was discovered in 1900 by Dorn. The fact that Rutherford and Owens had already discovered 220Rn the previous year is generally overlooked. Double sharp (talk) 08:37, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]