Ernest Lawrence a scrap of a paper napkin. While sitting in the library one evening in 1929, Lawrence glanced over a journal article by Rolf Widerøe, and was intrigued by one of the diagrams. This depicted a device that produced high-energy particles by means of a succession of small "pushes". The device depicted was laid out in a straight line using increasingly longer electrodes. At the time, physicists were beginning to explore the atomic nucleus. In 1919, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford had fired alpha particles into nitrogen and had succeeded in knocking protons out of some of the nuclei. But
Mendelevium produced by bombarding plutonium and americium targets with lighter ions of carbon and nitrogen. The most important and most stable isotopes are in the range from Md to Md and are produced through bombardment of einsteinium isotopes with alpha particles: einsteinium-253, -254, and -255 can all be used. Md is produced as a daughter of No, and Md can be produced in a transfer reaction between einsteinium-254 and oxygen-18. Typically, the most commonly used isotope Md is produced by bombarding either einsteinium-253 or -254 with alpha particles: einsteinium-254 is preferred when available because it has a longer half-life and therefore