Science: Alabamium

Of the 92 elements which the late great Russian Dmitri Ivanovitch Mendelèeff (1834-1907) predicates with his Periodic Law, 16 have been discovered since 1894.* Two remain to be isolated—eka-iodine and eka-cesium.† Last week Dr. Fred Allison and Edgar Jackson Murphy of Alabama Polytechnic Institute at Auburn, Ala., reported that they had "evidence of considerable weight for the presence" of eka-cesium in certain salts they had reduced from lepidolite, a form of mica, and pollucite, a mineral consisting chiefly of cesium, aluminum and silicon. When they break down their salts they will get a...