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Talk:Protactinium

Protactinium (final version) received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which on 26 August 2023 was archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

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Article milestones Date Process Result November 30, 2010 Peer review Reviewed April 30, 2011 Good article nominee Listed September 29, 2014 Good topic candidate Promoted February 15, 2024 Good topic removal candidate Demoted 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

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]