TAN 19

The United Nations General Assembly and UNESCO proclaimed 2019 as the "International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT2019)" on the occasion of its 150^th anniversary.
The extension of the Periodic Table by new chemical elements was at the heart of the TAN conference. Accordingly, the conference opened with a special symposium honoring the International Year of the Periodic Table.

The symposium program included presentations by discoverers of elements 107 to 118 and by directors of the laboratories at which these elements were discovered.
Further presentations looked back in time and illustrated the spreading of the concept of the periodic table, discussed the transformation of the concept of chemical elements, or addressed questions associated with the placing of new elements in the periodic table in historical times.
The symposium was completed by welcome addresses of the presidents of national and international chemical and physics organizations IUPAC, IUPAP, GDCh, and DPG.

The four element discoverers — from left: Professor Peter Armbruster and Professor Gottfried Münzenberg (GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt); Dr. Kouji Morimoto (RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, Wako, Japan); Professor Yuri Oganessian, (Flerov Laboratory for Nuclear Reactions, Dubna, Russland)
Photo: Björn Lübbe, Wilhelmshavener Zeitung