The transuranic elements and the island of stability

Since the 1930s the synthesis of nuclides too unstable to exist naturally on Earth has stretched the periodic table to 118 elements. While the lighter transuranic elements have found uses, the isotopes of those past lawrencium, the superheavy elements, are too unstable to exist outside the laboratory. In the 1970s, leading element discoverers Glenn Seaborg at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, and Georgy Flerov, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, USSR, took interest in a supposed 'island of stability', leading from the nuclear shell model of Maria Goeppert Mayer and Hans Jensen, and predicted elements with so-called magic numbers of protons and neutrons would be far more stable. This review shall look at the historical developments that led to the field of element discovery, the attempts to discover superheavy elements in nature based on the island of stability, and the subsequent successful synthesis of elements and the implications of their half-lives and properties. This article is part of the theme issue 'Mendeleev and the periodic table'.