Darmstadtium team proposed the name "becquerelium" after Henri Becquerel. The American team in 1997 proposed the name "hahnium" after Otto Hahn (previously this name had been used for element 105). The name "darmstadtium" (Ds) was suggested by the GSI team in honor of the city of Darmstadt, where the element was discovered. The GSI team originally also considered naming the element "wixhausium", after the suburb of Darmstadt known as Wixhausen where the element was discovered, but eventually decided on "darmstadtium". The new name was officially recommended by IUPAC on August 16, 2003. Darmstadtium has no stable or naturally occurring isotopes. Several
Otto Hahn transferred from Vienna to Berlin. So began the thirty-year collaboration and lifelong close friendship between the two scientists. After the physicist Harriet Brooks had observed a "radioactive recoil" in 1904, but interpreted it wrongly, Otto Hahn succeeded, in late 1908 and early 1909, in demonstrating the radioactive recoil incident to alpha particle emission and interpreting it correctly. The physicist Walther Gerlach described this as "a profoundly significant discovery in physics with far-reaching consequences". Rutherford in Manchester wrote in a letter to his mother: "He is doing the best work in Germany at present." In 1910, Hahn was appointed professor by