Three atoms of element 111 were made in December 1994 when the team led by Peter Armbruster and Sigurd Hofman at the GSI heavy ion cyclotron in Darmstadt, Germany bombarded a target of bismuth-209 with billions of atoms of nickel-64 with kinetic energies around 320MeV. This created a compound nucleus of 111-273*, which, upon losing a neutron, became 111-272. The atoms had a mass number of 272, and decayed by alpha emission in a period of about a millisecond into two previously unknown and so far heaviest isotopes of elements 109 and 107, (the alpha decaying meitnerium-268 and the alpha decaying bohrium-264). The alpha decay chains were followed down to already known isotopes dubnium-260 and lawrencium-256.

The halflife of 111-272 is about 1.5 milliseconds. Claim to fame: