Chemical element "Sb" (stibium) for antimony. Chemical symbols are understood internationally when element names might require translation. There have sometimes been differences in the past. For example, Germans in the past have used "J" (for the alternate name Jod) for iodine, but now use "I" and "Iod". The first letter of a chemical symbol is always capitalized, as in the preceding examples, and the subsequent letters, if any, are always lower case (small letters). Thus, the symbols for californium and einsteinium are Cf and Es. There are also symbols in chemical equations for groups of chemical elements, for example in comparative formulas.
Californium reported in 1954. The high spontaneous fission rate of californium-252 was observed in these samples. The first experiment with californium in concentrated form occurred in 1958. The isotopes californium-249 to californium-252 were isolated that same year from a sample of plutonium-239 that had been irradiated with neutrons in a nuclear reactor for five years. Two years later, in 1960, Burris Cunningham and James Wallman of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory of the University of California created the first californium compounds—californium trichloride, californium oxychloride, and californium oxide—by treating californium with steam and hydrochloric acid. The High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at the