Isotope ranking reveals leading labs

Nature : Countries’ differing investments in nuclear technology affect, among other things, how and where nuclear isotopes are discovered. Now, Michael Thoennessen, a physicist at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University, has assembled a database of all known nuclear isotopes. The database lists each isotope along with the researcher who discovered it, the lab at which he or she worked, and the method by which the isotope was produced. The goal, according to Thoennessen, isn’t to focus attention on individual achievement but rather to have some way to gauge a country or lab’s involvement in the field and to track how that changes over time. To qualify as a discovery for inclusion in the database, an isotope’s mass and charge must be identified in a peer-reviewed paper. Not everyone agrees that the database is the best way to capture the science of the field, as it only takes into account the discovery of an isotope and doesn’t contain data on who studies its properties and nuclear structure.