Robert Smolańczuk (born in

Olecko Olecko (former since 1560, colloquially also , since 1928, lt, Alėcka) is a town in northeastern Poland, in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, located in Masuria near Ełk and Suwałki. It is situated at the mouth of the Lega river which flow ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

) is a Polish

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimen ...

. He received his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

from the Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies in 1996. He later visited

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

(LBNL) as a

Fulbright The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

Fellow between 1998-2000. He predicted in late 1998 that a

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

-and-

krypton Krypton (from grc, κρυπτός, translit=kryptos 'the hidden one') is a chemical element with the symbol Kr and atomic number 36. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas that occurs in trace amounts in the atmosphere and is often ...

collision technique could produce the element

oganesson Oganesson is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Og and atomic number 118. It was first synthesized in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, near Moscow, Russia, by a joint team of Russian and American scient ...

, at that time considered impossible by most scientists involved in heavy-element research. This was experimentally attempted at LBNL in 1999 and appeared to have been successful, but an investigation determined that the data had been fabricated by

Victor Ninov Victor Ninov ( bg, Виктор Нинов, born June 27, 1959) is a Bulgarian physicist and former researcher who worked primarily in creating heavy elements. He is known for the co-discoveries of elements darmstadtium, 110, roentgenium, 111, ...

. It is now expected that this reaction is unlikely to succeed. Smolańczuk received the Nitchke Award in 2000 for developing a phenomenological model of synthesis of superheavy nuclei. He currently works at the National Centre for Nuclear Research in

Otwock Otwock is a city in east-central Poland, some southeast of Warsaw, with 44,635 inhabitants (2019). Otwock is a part of the Warsaw Agglomeration. It is situated on the right bank of Vistula River below the mouth of Swider River. Otwock is hom ...

, Poland.National Centre for Nuclear research, retrieved 29 September 2011
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References

Polish nuclear physicists 21st-century Polish physicists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{physicist-stub