Nihonium
Ever heard of Nihonium? Not yet, I suppose – it’s brand new. It’s element 113 on the periodic table of elements and was just officially announced last week by the “International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry”. Thursday night, in the only still watchable form of news on NHK (see comments about the NHK news here) the “jiron koron” news digest, the ten minutes of this program were dedicated to Nihonium, that’s why I heard about it.
They showed the periodic table of elements with national flags, indicating which country’s scientists have discovered the respective element. There were a lot of German flags out there, the US flag, and some other European flags and now for the first time, Japan is on the list as well.
By the way, Nihon (or Nippon) is what the Japanese name their country.
There is a lot of pride around of course to be the first non-western culture to claim such a stake etc. but my point today is the people who discovered the element (who were able to generate it for 0.02 seconds, they said in the news report).
The scientists who discovered the element, and of course all other such scientists quite independent of their nationality, are super specialized people who dig into one topic for years and years on end trying to achieve a result. What they need to have in order to do that is, in my opinion, immense intrinsic motivation, frustration tolerance, patience and relentless persistence.
These Nihonium scientists managed to create the element three times in 2004, 2005 and 2012. I don’t know how many years before the first success they started trying. So, after 20 years or so they get their element on the periodic table. Yeah! The journalist spoke of this research having cost millions of Euro and there is no immediate or even mid-term use for Nihonium. It’s basic research, which he defended as necessary, sort of a basic human right and there is also the aspect of “you-never-know-what-it’s-gonna-be-good-for”.
I’m all for that, too. Basic research like that tries to get answers to ultimate questions like our place in the universe and its meaning, and I too consider this to be indeed a basic human right.
The people who discovered Nihonium got their reward now for their persistence, patience and frustration tolerance but just how many scientists and also artists are out there who never receive such recognition? In a world with by now over 7 billion people it gets more and more difficult to gain wide-spread recognition for what you do. Most of us only have the recognition of our friends, families and co-workers to go on. And we all want recognition, we want the people around us to positively acknowledge our existence. If we don’t get such recognition we become unhappy, depressed, and worse. = We shall all try to push the “like” button on Facebook a bit more often – just kidding 
