Tritium deuterium, another isotope of hydrogen, by Ernest Rutherford, Mark Oliphant, and Paul Harteck. However, their experiment could not isolate tritium, which was later accomplished by Luis Alvarez and Robert Cornog, who also realized tritium's radioactivity. Willard F. Libby recognized that tritium could be used for radiometric dating of water and wine. Tritium Tritium ( or ; symbol ' or ', also known as hydrogen-3) is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. The nucleus of tritium (sometimes called a triton) contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of protium (by far the most abundant hydrogen isotope) contains one proton and
Radioactive decay in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis. These lightest stable nuclides (including deuterium) survive to today, but any radioactive isotopes of the light elements produced in the Big Bang (such as tritium) have long since decayed. Isotopes of elements heavier than boron were not produced at all in the Big Bang, and these first five elements do not have any long-lived radioisotopes. Thus, all radioactive nuclei are, therefore, relatively young with respect to the birth of the universe, having formed later in various other types of nucleosynthesis in stars (in particular, supernovae), and also during ongoing interactions between stable isotopes