Once the discovery of element 75 was made public, it should in fact have brought the newly weds fame and recognition, but the contrary occurred due to the wave of scrutiny for the scientific claims on element 43. The Noddack’s studied element 43 in similar fashion as element 75, but this occasion would produce somewhat less convincing results. As more scientists within the field attempted to replicate the results with little success, more and more skepticism from the scientific community evolved. To make things worse, the skepticism from the scientific community would compound with the proposed name of “mansurium” for element 43. “The British chemist J. Newton Friend argued that while rhenium was appropriately named in “honour of their national river,” “mansurium” was not a benign choice but in fact represented a nationalistic political agenda” (Habashi, 1997, p. 220). This was thought to be overtly nationalistic because of a battle that took place at Masuria during WWI in September of 1914, which would leave many Russians’ dead, wounded, and defeated by the German forces. Moreover, some speculated that the “…[m]ansurian marshes represented barriers to the allied advances in World War I” (Habashi, 1997, p. 220).
The negative publicity conjured up by the lack of validity within the experiments performed along, with an inherently problematic name for element 43, directs us towards an interesting point by Bauchspies, Croissant, and Restive (2006) about the norms and procedures within an academic scientific community: “[s]ocial institutions are sets of durable social relations. All institutions are organized around social roles, rules of conduct, forms of organization, social and material practices, and often specific languages or discourse” (p. 51). Thus, I speculate that the Noddack’s choice in naming suspected element 43 – mansurain, was perceived by the scientific community as a violation of just about all categories mentioned above.
However, it’s interesting to attempt to analyze and speculate the objective that the Noddack’s may have possibly had when deciding on what name to assign element 43. Because they were working in Germany during a time when major social upheaval was occurring: loss of WWI, new political parties being formed, new political agendas and thousands of political murders and assassinations; it then becomes logical that the Noddack’s may have possibly chosen a name that was in the interest of Germany so that if any speculation from the government of wrong doing or anything of that nature ever did occur, they could then use the nationalistic name as leverage to gain support.
Again, we have to return to the quote above and remember that technology and science is an institution that is inextricably linked to other institutions. In the case of the Noddack’s, where they were performing science in a nation where democratic rights were slowly giving way to a totalitarian state of oppressive rule and dictatorship, it then makes the utmost since that they would safeguard their careers by working within the parameters set by the Weimar Republic and the soon to be Reich government.
