Interviewing Yuri Oganessian

Rebecca Mileham

I visited Russia in 2018 to interview Yuri Oganessian about his role in an unlikely Cold War collaboration to discover superheavy chemical elements – the heaviest of which is named after him. Read below my essay from the Royal Society’s Research Culture publication, posted by kind permission, with thanks to editor Jon Turney.

 

Cold war, hot science

Cooperation between scientists in different countries can be thwarted by political conflicts or security concerns. Sometimes, though, science still finds a way, as the determined quest for superheavy elements shows.   >>>