ABSTRACT
The interval between the syntheses of element 107 in February 1981 and element 112 in February 1996 is almost 15 years. The discovery of new elements is not equally distributed over this period: the first three were made in 1981-4, the last three from 1994-6. There is a reason behind this clustering of discoveries but we will follow events chronologically. For an easier orientation of where the new elements are located, how they decay and what their half-lives are, see Figure 10.1. This gives the most recent data up to the heaviest nuclei presently under investigation in a partial overview of the chart of nuclei.
