Scienceאמנון מרינוב

Amnon Marinov

Amnon Marinov was an Israeli nuclear physicist and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who claimed discoveries of superheavy elements 112 and 122.

1930 to 2011Research on superheavy elementsClaimed discovery of element 112Claimed discovery of unbibium

Occupation: nuclear physicist, physicist
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Amnon Marinov was born in 1930 in Jerusalem

Amnon Marinov was born in Jerusalem in 1930 and went to school in the city. His father, Haim Marinov, was deputy mayor of Jerusalem from 1964 to 1973. He married Rachel, daughter of Ya'akov Maimon, the inventor of Hebrew stenography.

He joined a Palmach training group and fought in the War of Independence with the Harel Brigade. In 1949 he was among the founders of Kibbutz Tzora. From 1958 he lived in Jerusalem.

He studied physics at the Hebrew University, earned his doctorate there and joined the Racah Institute of Physics, where he became a professor. He did postdoctoral work at Argonne National Laboratory from 1963 to 1965 and was a visiting researcher in Britain and Germany. His research covered nuclear structure, nuclear reactions, superheavy elements and long-lived isomers.

In 1971 his group claimed the discovery of element 112, but credit went to GSI in Germany for its 1996 work. In 2008 his group claimed to find atoms of element 122 in natural thorium. The claim was criticized, and a later test with accelerator mass spectrometry did not confirm it.

He died on December 7, 2011, and was buried at Kibbutz Ma'ale HaHamisha.