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Einsteinium

Einsteinium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Es and atomic number 99. It was named in honor of Albert Einstein and is a member of the actinide series and is the seventh transuranium element.

Einsteinium was discovered as a component of the debris of the first hydrogen bomb explosion in 1952. Its most common isotope, einsteinium-253 (half-life 20.47 days), is produced artificially from decay of californium-253 in a few dedicated high-power nuclear reactors with a total yield on the order of one milligram per year. The reactor synthesis is followed by a complex process of separating einsteinium-253 from other actinides and products of their decay. Other isotopes are synthesized in various laboratories, but in much smaller amounts, by bombarding heavy actinide elements with light ions. Due to the small amounts of produced einsteinium and the short half-life of its most common isotope, there are no practical applications for it except basic scientific research. In particular, einsteinium was used to synthesize, for the first time, 17 atoms of the new element mendelevium in 1955.

Einsteinium is a soft, silvery, paramagnetic metal. Its chemistry is typical of the late actinides, with a preponderance of the +3 oxidation state; the +2 oxidation state is also accessible, especially in solids. The high radioactivity of einsteinium-253 produces a visible glow and rapidly damages its crystalline metal lattice, with released heat of about 1000 watts per gram. Difficulty in studying its properties is due to einsteinium-253's decay to berkelium-249 and then californium-249 at a rate of about 3% per day. The isotope of einsteinium with the longest half-life, einsteinium-252 (half-life 471.7 days) would be more suitable for investigation of physical properties, but it has proven far more difficult to produce and is available only in minute quantities, not in bulk. Einsteinium is the element with the highest atomic number which has been observed in macroscopic quantities in its pure form as einsteinium-253.

Like all synthetic transuranium elements, isotopes of einsteinium are very radioactive and are considered highly dangerous to health on ingestion.

History
Einsteinium was first identified in December 1952 by Albert Ghiorso and co-workers at the University of California, Berkeley in collaboration with the Argonne and Los Alamos National Laboratories, in the fallout from the Ivy Mike nuclear test. The test was carried out on November 1, 1952, at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean and was the first successful test of a thermonuclear weapon. Initial examination of the debris from the explosion had shown the production of a new isotope of plutonium,, which could only have formed by the absorption of six neutrons by a uranium-238 nucleus followed by two beta decays.

At the time, the multiple neutron absorption was thought to be an extremely rare process, but the identification of indicated that still more neutrons could have been captured by the uranium nuclei, thereby producing new elements heavier than californium.

Ghiorso and co-workers analyzed filter papers which had been flown through the explosion cloud on airplanes (the same sampling technique that had been used to discover ). Larger amounts of radioactive material were later isolated from coral debris of the atoll, which were delivered to the U.S. The separation of suspected new elements was carried out in the presence of a citric acid/ammonium buffer solution in a weakly acidic medium (pH ≈ 3.5), using ion exchange at elevated temperatures; fewer than 200 atoms of einsteinium were recovered in the end. Nevertheless, element 99 (einsteinium), namely its 253Es isotope, could be detected via its characteristic high-energy alpha decay at 6.6 MeV. It was produced by the capture of 15 neutrons by uranium-238 nuclei followed by seven beta-decays, and had a half-life of 20.5 days. Such multiple neutron absorption was made possible by the high neutron flux density during the detonation, so that newly generated heavy isotopes had plenty of available neutrons to absorb before they could disintegrate into lighter elements. Neutron capture initially raised the mass number without changing the atomic number of the nuclide, and the concomitant beta-decays resulted in a gradual increase in the atomic number:

Some 238U atoms, however, could absorb two additional neutrons (for a total of 17), resulting in 255Es, as well as in the 255Fm isotope of another new element, fermium. The discovery of the new elements and the associated new data on multiple neutron capture were initially kept secret on the orders of the U.S. military until 1955 due to Cold War tensions and competition with Soviet Union in nuclear technologies. However, the rapid capture of so many neutrons would provide needed direct experimental confirmation of the so-called r-process multiple neutron absorption needed to explain the cosmic nucleosynthesis (production) of certain heavy chemical elements (heavier than nickel) in supernova explosions, before beta decay. Such a process is needed to explain the existence of many stable elements in the universe.

Meanwhile, isotopes of element 99 (as well as of new element 100, fermium) were produced in the Berkeley and Argonne laboratories, in a nuclear reaction between nitrogen-14 and uranium-238, and later by intense neutron irradiation of plutonium or californium:

These results were published in several articles in 1954 with the disclaimer that these were not the first studies that had been carried out on the elements. The Berkeley team also reported some results on the chemical properties of einsteinium and fermium. The Ivy Mike results were declassified and published in 1955.

In their discovery of the elements 99 and 100, the American teams had competed with a group at the Nobel Institute for Physics, Stockholm, Sweden. In late 1953 – early 1954, the Swedish group succeeded in the synthesis of light isotopes of element 100, in particular 250Fm, by bombarding uranium with oxygen nuclei. These results were also published in 1954. Nevertheless, the priority of the Berkeley team was generally recognized, as its publications preceded the Swedish article, and they were based on the previously undisclosed results of the 1952 thermonuclear explosion; thus the Berkeley team was given the privilege to name the new elements. As the effort which had led to the design of Ivy Mike was codenamed Project PANDA, element 99 had been jokingly nicknamed "Pandemonium" but the official names suggested by the Berkeley group derived from two prominent scientists, Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi: "We suggest for the name for the element with the atomic number 99, einsteinium (symbol E) after Albert Einstein and for the name for the element with atomic number 100, fermium (symbol Fm), after Enrico Fermi." Both Einstein and Fermi died between the time the names were originally proposed and when they were announced. The discovery of these new elements was announced by Albert Ghiorso at the first Geneva Atomic Conference held on 8–20 August 1955. The symbol for einsteinium was first given as "E" and later changed to "Es" by IUPAC.

Physical
Einsteinium is a synthetic, silver, radioactive metal. In the periodic table, it is located to the right of the actinide californium, to the left of the actinide fermium and below the lanthanide holmium with which it shares many similarities in physical and chemical properties. Its density of 8.84 g/cm3 is lower than that of californium (15.1 g/cm3) and is nearly the same as that of holmium (8.79 g/cm3), despite atomic einsteinium being much heavier than holmium. The melting point of einsteinium (860 °C) is also relatively low – below californium (900 °C), fermium (1527 °C) and holmium (1461 °C). Einsteinium is a soft metal, with the bulk modulus of only 15 GPa, which value is one of the lowest among non-alkali metals.

Contrary to the lighter actinides californium, berkelium, curium and americium, which crystallize in a double hexagonal structure at ambient conditions, einsteinium is believed to have a face-centered cubic (fcc) symmetry with the space group Fm$\overline{3}$m and the lattice constant a = 575 pm. However, there is a report of room-temperature hexagonal einsteinium metal with a = 398 pm and c = 650 pm, which converted to the fcc phase upon heating to 300 °C.

The self-damage induced by the radioactivity of einsteinium is so strong that it rapidly destroys the crystal lattice, and the energy release during this process, 1000 watts per gram of 253Es, induces a visible glow. These processes may contribute to the relatively low density and melting point of einsteinium. Further, owing to the small size of the available samples, the melting point of einsteinium was often deduced by observing the sample being heated inside an electron microscope. Thus, the surface effects in small samples could reduce the melting point value.

The metal is trivalent and has a noticeably high volatility. In order to reduce the self-radiation damage, most measurements of solid einsteinium and its compounds are performed right after thermal annealing. Also, some compounds are studied under the atmosphere of the reductant gas, for example H2O+HCl for EsOCl so that the sample is partly regrown during its decomposition.

Apart from the self-destruction of solid einsteinium and its compounds, other intrinsic difficulties in studying this element include scarcity – the most common 253Es isotope is available only once or twice a year in sub-milligram amounts – and self-contamination due to rapid conversion of einsteinium to berkelium and then to californium at a rate of about 3.3% per day:

Thus, most einsteinium samples are contaminated, and their intrinsic properties are often deduced by extrapolating back experimental data accumulated over time. Other experimental techniques to circumvent the contamination problem include selective optical excitation of einsteinium ions by a tunable laser, such as in studying its luminescence properties.

Magnetic properties have been studied for einsteinium metal, its oxide and fluoride. All three materials showed Curie–Weiss paramagnetic behavior from liquid helium to room temperature. The effective magnetic moments were deduced as $10.4 μ_{B}$ for Es2O3 and $11.4 μ_{B}$ for the EsF3, which are the highest values among actinides, and the corresponding Curie temperatures are 53 and 37 K.

Chemical
Like all actinides, einsteinium is rather reactive. Its trivalent oxidation state is most stable in solids and aqueous solution where it induces a pale pink color. The existence of divalent einsteinium is firmly established, especially in the solid phase; such +2 state is not observed in many other actinides, including protactinium, uranium, neptunium, plutonium, curium and berkelium. Einsteinium(II) compounds can be obtained, for example, by reducing einsteinium(III) with samarium(II) chloride.

Isotopes
Eighteen isotopes and four nuclear isomers are known for einsteinium, with mass numbers ranging from 240 to 257. All are radioactive and the most stable nuclide, 252Es, has a half-life of 471.7 days. The next most stable isotopes are 254Es (half-life 275.7 days), 255Es (39.8 days), and 253Es (20.47 days). All of the remaining isotopes have half-lives shorter than 40 hours, most shorter than 30 minutes. Of the five nuclear isomers, the most stable is 254mEs with a half-life of 39.3 hours.

Nuclear fission
Einsteinium has a high rate of nuclear fission that results in a low critical mass for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. This mass is 9.89 kilograms for a bare sphere of 254Es isotope, and can be lowered to 2.9 kilograms by adding a 30-centimeter-thick steel neutron reflector, or even to 2.26 kilograms with a 20-cm-thick reflector made of water. However, even this small critical mass greatly exceeds the total amount of einsteinium isolated thus far, especially of the rare 254Es isotope.

Natural occurrence
Because of the short half-life of all isotopes of einsteinium, any primordial einsteinium—that is, einsteinium that could have been present on the Earth at its formation—has long since decayed. Synthesis of einsteinium from naturally-occurring actinides uranium and thorium in the Earth's crust requires multiple neutron capture, which is an extremely unlikely event. Therefore, all terrestrial einsteinium is produced in scientific laboratories, high-power nuclear reactors, or in nuclear weapons tests, and exists only within a few years from the time of the synthesis.

The transuranic elements from americium to fermium, including einsteinium, were once created in the natural nuclear fission reactor at Oklo, but any quantities produced then would have long since decayed away.

Einsteinium was theoretically observed in the spectrum of Przybylski's Star. However, the lead author of the studies finding einsteinium and other short-lived actinides in Przybylski's Star, Vera F. Gopka, admitted that "the position of lines of the radioactive elements under search were simply visualized in synthetic spectrum as vertical markers because there are not any atomic data for these lines except for their wavelengths (Sansonetti et al. 2004), enabling one to calculate their profiles with more or less real intensities." The signature spectra of einsteinium's isotopes have since been comprehensively analyzed experimentally (in 2021), though there is no published research confirming whether the theorized einsteinium signatures proposed to be found in the star's spectrum match the lab-determined results.

Synthesis and extraction
Einsteinium is produced in minute quantities by bombarding lighter actinides with neutrons in dedicated high-flux nuclear reactors. The world's major irradiation sources are the 85-megawatt High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, U.S., and the SM-2 loop reactor at the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors (NIIAR) in Dimitrovgrad, Russia, which are both dedicated to the production of transcurium (Z > 96) elements. These facilities have similar power and flux levels, and are expected to have comparable production capacities for transcurium elements, although the quantities produced at NIIAR are not widely reported. In a "typical processing campaign" at Oak Ridge, tens of grams of curium are irradiated to produce decigram quantities of californium, milligram quantities of berkelium (249Bk) and einsteinium and picogram quantities of fermium.

The first microscopic sample of 253Es sample weighing about 10 nanograms was prepared in 1961 at HFIR. A special magnetic balance was designed to estimate its weight. Larger batches were produced later starting from several kilograms of plutonium with the einsteinium yields (mostly 253Es) of 0.48 milligrams in 1967–1970, 3.2 milligrams in 1971–1973, followed by steady production of about 3 milligrams per year between 1974 and 1978. These quantities however refer to the integral amount in the target right after irradiation. Subsequent separation procedures reduced the amount of isotopically pure einsteinium roughly tenfold.

Laboratory synthesis
Heavy neutron irradiation of plutonium results in four major isotopes of einsteinium: 253Es (α-emitter with half-life of 20.47 days and with a spontaneous fission half-life of 7×105 years); 254mEs (β-emitter with half-life of 39.3 hours), 254Es (α-emitter with half-life of about 276 days) and 255Es (β-emitter with half-life of 39.8 days). An alternative route involves bombardment of uranium-238 with high-intensity nitrogen or oxygen ion beams.

Einsteinium-247 (half-life 4.55 minutes) was produced by irradiating americium-241 with carbon or uranium-238 with nitrogen ions. The latter reaction was first realized in 1967 in Dubna, Russia, and the involved scientists were awarded the Lenin Komsomol Prize.

The isotope 248Es was produced by irradiating 249Cf with deuterium ions. It mainly decays by emission of electrons to 248Cf with a half-life of $25$ minutes, but also releases α-particles of 6.87 MeV energy, with the ratio of electrons to α-particles of about 400.

The heavier isotopes 249Es, 250Es, 251Es and 252Es were obtained by bombarding 249Bk with α-particles. One to four neutrons are liberated in this process making possible the formation of four different isotopes in one reaction.

Einsteinium-253 was produced by irradiating a 0.1–0.2 milligram 252Cf target with a thermal neutron flux of (2–5)×1014 neutrons·cm−2·s−1 for 500–900 hours:

In 2020, scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory were able to create about 200 nanograms of 254Es. This allowed some chemical properties of the element to be studied for the first time.

Synthesis in nuclear explosions
The analysis of the debris at the 10-megaton Ivy Mike nuclear test was a part of long-term project. One of the goals of which was studying the efficiency of production of transuranium elements in high-power nuclear explosions. The motivation for these experiments was that synthesis of such elements from uranium requires multiple neutron capture. The probability of such events increases with the neutron flux, and nuclear explosions are the most powerful man-made neutron sources, providing densities of the order 1023 neutrons/cm2 within a microsecond, or about 1029 neutrons/(cm2·s). In comparison, the flux of the HFIR reactor is 5 neutrons/(cm2·s). A dedicated laboratory was set up right at Enewetak Atoll for preliminary analysis of debris, as some isotopes could have decayed by the time the debris samples reached the mainland U.S. The laboratory was receiving samples for analysis as soon as possible, from airplanes equipped with paper filters which flew over the atoll after the tests. Whereas it was hoped to discover new chemical elements heavier than fermium, none of these were found even after a series of megaton explosions conducted between 1954 and 1956 at the atoll.

The atmospheric results were supplemented by the underground test data accumulated in the 1960s at the Nevada Test Site, as it was hoped that powerful explosions conducted in confined space might result in improved yields and heavier isotopes. Apart from traditional uranium charges, combinations of uranium with americium and thorium have been tried, as well as a mixed plutonium-neptunium charge, but they were less successful in terms of yield and was attributed to stronger losses of heavy isotopes due to enhanced fission rates in heavy-element charges. Product isolation was problematic as the explosions were spreading debris through melting and vaporizing the surrounding rocks at depths of 300–600 meters. Drilling to such depths to extract the products was both slow and inefficient in terms of collected volumes.

Among the nine underground tests that were carried between 1962 and 1969, the last one was the most powerful and had the highest yield of transuranium elements. Milligrams of einsteinium that would normally take a year of irradiation in a high-power reactor, were produced within a microsecond. However, the major practical problem of the entire proposal was collecting the radioactive debris dispersed by the powerful blast. Aircraft filters adsorbed only about 4 of the total amount, and collection of tons of corals at Enewetak Atoll increased this fraction by only two orders of magnitude. Extraction of about 500 kilograms of underground rocks 60 days after the Hutch explosion recovered only about 1 of the total charge. The amount of transuranium elements in this 500-kg batch was only 30 times higher than in a 0.4 kg rock picked up 7 days after the test which demonstrated the highly non-linear dependence of the transuranium elements yield on the amount of retrieved radioactive rock. Shafts were drilled at the site before the test in order to accelerate sample collection after explosion, so that explosion would expel radioactive material from the epicenter through the shafts and to collecting volumes near the surface. This method was tried in two tests and instantly provided hundreds kilograms of material, but with actinide concentration 3 times lower than in samples obtained after drilling. Whereas such method could have been efficient in scientific studies of short-lived isotopes, it could not improve the overall collection efficiency of the produced actinides.

Although no new elements (apart from einsteinium and fermium) could be detected in the nuclear test debris, and the total yields of transuranium elements were disappointingly low, these tests did provide significantly higher amounts of rare heavy isotopes than previously available in laboratories.

Separation
Separation procedure of einsteinium depends on the synthesis method. In the case of light-ion bombardment inside a cyclotron, the heavy ion target is attached to a thin foil, and the generated einsteinium is simply washed off the foil after the irradiation. However, the produced amounts in such experiments are relatively low. The yields are much higher for reactor irradiation, but there, the product is a mixture of various actinide isotopes, as well as lanthanides produced in the nuclear fission decays. In this case, isolation of einsteinium is a tedious procedure which involves several repeating steps of cation exchange, at elevated temperature and pressure, and chromatography. Separation from berkelium is important, because the most common einsteinium isotope produced in nuclear reactors, 253Es, decays with a half-life of only 20 days to 249Bk, which is fast on the timescale of most experiments. Such separation relies on the fact that berkelium easily oxidizes to the solid +4 state and precipitates, whereas other actinides, including einsteinium, remain in their +3 state in solutions.

Separation of trivalent actinides from lanthanide fission products can be done by a cation-exchange resin column using a 90% water/10% ethanol solution saturated with hydrochloric acid (HCl) as eluant. It is usually followed by anion-exchange chromatography using 6 molar HCl as eluant. A cation-exchange resin column (Dowex-50 exchange column) treated with ammonium salts is then used to separate fractions containing elements 99, 100 and 101. These elements can be then identified simply based on their elution position/time, using α-hydroxyisobutyrate solution (α-HIB), for example, as eluant.

Separation of the 3+ actinides can also be achieved by solvent extraction chromatography, using bis-(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid (abbreviated as HDEHP) as the stationary organic phase, and nitric acid as the mobile aqueous phase. The actinide elution sequence is reversed from that of the cation-exchange resin column. The einsteinium separated by this method has the advantage to be free of organic complexing agent, as compared to the separation using a resin column.

Preparation of the metal
Einsteinium is highly reactive and therefore strong reducing agents are required to obtain the pure metal from its compounds. This can be achieved by reduction of einsteinium(III) fluoride with metallic lithium:
 * EsF3 + 3 Li → Es + 3 LiF

However, owing to its low melting point and high rate of self-radiation damage, einsteinium has high vapor pressure, which is higher than that of lithium fluoride. This makes this reduction reaction rather inefficient. It was tried in the early preparation attempts and quickly abandoned in favor of reduction of einsteinium(III) oxide with lanthanum metal:
 * Es2O3 + 2 La → 2 Es + La2O3

Oxides
Einsteinium(III) oxide (Es2O3) was obtained by burning einsteinium(III) nitrate. It forms colorless cubic crystals, which were first characterized from microgram samples sized about 30 nanometers. Two other phases, monoclinic and hexagonal, are known for this oxide. The formation of a certain Es2O3 phase depends on the preparation technique and sample history, and there is no clear phase diagram. Interconversions between the three phases can occur spontaneously, as a result of self-irradiation or self-heating. The hexagonal phase is isotypic with lanthanum oxide where the Es3+ ion is surrounded by a 6-coordinated group of O2− ions.

Halides

Einsteinium halides are known for the oxidation states +2 and +3. The most stable state is +3 for all halides from fluoride to iodide.

Einsteinium(III) fluoride (EsF3) can be precipitated from einsteinium(III) chloride solutions upon reaction with fluoride ions. An alternative preparation procedure is to exposure einsteinium(III) oxide to chlorine trifluoride (ClF3) or F2 gas at a pressure of 1–2 atmospheres and a temperature between 300 and 400 °C. The EsF3 crystal structure is hexagonal, as in californium(III) fluoride (CfF3) where the Es3+ ions are 8-fold coordinated by fluorine ions in a bicapped trigonal prism arrangement.

Einsteinium(III) chloride (EsCl3) can be prepared by annealing einsteinium(III) oxide in the atmosphere of dry hydrogen chloride vapors at about 500 °C for some 20 minutes. It crystallizes upon cooling at about 425 °C into an orange solid with a hexagonal structure of UCl3 type, where einsteinium atoms are 9-fold coordinated by chlorine atoms in a tricapped trigonal prism geometry. Einsteinium(III) bromide (EsBr3) is a pale-yellow solid with a monoclinic structure of AlCl3 type, where the einsteinium atoms are octahedrally coordinated by bromine (coordination number 6).

The divalent compounds of einsteinium are obtained by reducing the trivalent halides with hydrogen:
 * 2 EsX3 + H2 → 2 EsX2 + 2 HX,   X = F, Cl, Br, I

Einsteinium(II) chloride (EsCl2), einsteinium(II) bromide (EsBr2), and einsteinium(II) iodide (EsI2) have been produced and characterized by optical absorption, with no structural information available yet.

Known oxyhalides of einsteinium include EsOCl, EsOBr and EsOI. These salts are synthesized by treating a trihalide with a vapor mixture of water and the corresponding hydrogen halide: for example, EsCl3 + H2O/HCl to obtain EsOCl.

Organoeinsteinium compounds
The high radioactivity of einsteinium has a potential use in radiation therapy, and organometallic complexes have been synthesized in order to deliver einsteinium atoms to an appropriate organ in the body. Experiments have been performed on injecting einsteinium citrate (as well as fermium compounds) to dogs. Einsteinium(III) was also incorporated into beta-diketone chelate complexes, since analogous complexes with lanthanides previously showed strongest UV-excited luminescence among metallorganic compounds. When preparing einsteinium complexes, the Es3+ ions were 1000 times diluted with Gd3+ ions. This allowed reducing the radiation damage so that the compounds did not disintegrate during the period of 20 minutes required for the measurements. The resulting luminescence from Es3+ was much too weak to be detected. This was explained by the unfavorable relative energies of the individual constituents of the compound that hindered efficient energy transfer from the chelate matrix to Es3+ ions. Similar conclusion was drawn for other actinides americium, berkelium and fermium.

Luminescence of Es3+ ions was however observed in inorganic hydrochloric acid solutions as well as in organic solution with di(2-ethylhexyl)orthophosphoric acid. It shows a broad peak at about 1064 nanometers (half-width about 100 nm) which can be resonantly excited by green light (ca. 495 nm wavelength). The luminescence has a lifetime of several microseconds and the quantum yield below 0.1%. The relatively high, compared to lanthanides, non-radiative decay rates in Es3+ were associated with the stronger interaction of f-electrons with the inner Es3+ electrons.

Applications
There is almost no use for any isotope of einsteinium outside basic scientific research aiming at production of higher transuranium elements and superheavy elements.

In 1955, mendelevium was synthesized by irradiating a target consisting of about 109 atoms of 253Es in the 60-inch cyclotron at Berkeley Laboratory. The resulting 253Es(α,n)256Md reaction yielded 17 atoms of the new element with the atomic number of 101.

The rare isotope 254Es is favored for production of superheavy elements because of its large mass, relatively long half-life of 270 days, and availability in significant amounts of several micrograms. Hence 254Es was used as a target in the attempted synthesis of ununennium (element 119) in 1985 by bombarding it with calcium-48 ions at the superHILAC linear particle accelerator at Berkeley, California. No atoms were identified, setting an upper limit for the cross section of this reaction at 300 nanobarns.

254Es was used as the calibration marker in the chemical analysis spectrometer ("alpha-scattering surface analyzer") of the Surveyor 5 lunar probe. The large mass of this isotope reduced the spectral overlap between signals from the marker and the studied lighter elements of the lunar surface.

Safety
Most of the available einsteinium toxicity data is from research on animals. Upon ingestion by rats, only ~0.01% of it ends in the bloodstream. From there, about 65% goes to the bones, where it would remain for ~50 years if not for its radioactive decay, not to speak of the 3-year maximum lifespan of rats, 25% to the lungs (biological half-life ~20 years, though this is again rendered irrelevant by the short half-life of einsteinium), 0.035% to the testicles or 0.01% to the ovaries – where einsteinium stays indefinitely. About 10% of the ingested amount is excreted. The distribution of einsteinium over bone surfaces is uniform and is similar to that of plutonium.

title: Einsteinium


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Edmund Stoiber

Edmund Rüdiger Stoiber (born 28 September 1941) is a German politician who served as the 16th minister-president of the state of Bavaria between 1993 and 2007 and chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU) between 1999 and 2007. In 2002, he ran for the office of Chancellor of Germany in the federal election, and in one of the narrowest elections in German history lost against Gerhard Schröder. On 18 January 2007, he announced that he would step down as minister-president and as party chairman by 30 September, after having been under fire in his own party for weeks.

Early life
Stoiber was born in Oberaudorf in the district of Rosenheim in Bavaria. Prior to entering politics in 1974 and serving in the Bavarian Parliament, he was a lawyer and worked at the University of Regensburg.

Education and profession
Stoiber attended the Ignaz-Günther-Gymnasium in Rosenheim, where he received his Abitur (high school diploma) in 1961, although he had to repeat one year for failing Latin. His military service was with the 1st Gebirgsdivision (mountain infantry division) in Mittenwald and Bad Reichenhall and was cutshort due to a knee injury. Stoiber then studied political science and (from the fall of 1962) law at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In 1967, he passed the state law exam and then worked at the University of Regensburg in criminal law and Eastern European law. He received a doctorate in jurisprudence, and then in 1971 passed the second state examination with distinction.

In 1971, Stoiber joined the Bavarian State Ministry of Development and Environment.

Political career

In 1978, Stoiber was elected secretary general of the CSU, a post he held until 1982/83. In this capacity, he served as campaign manager of Franz-Josef Strauss, the first Bavarian leader to run for the chancellorship, in the 1980 national elections. From 1982 to 1986 he served as deputy to the Bavarian secretary of the state and then, in the position of State Minister, led the State Chancellery from 1982 to 1988. From 1988 to 1993 he served as State Minister of the Interior.

Minister-President of Bavaria, 1993–2007
In May 1993, the Landtag of Bavaria, the state's parliament, elected Stoiber as Minister-President succeeding Max Streibl. He came to power amid a political crisis involving a sex scandal, surrounding a contender for the state premiership. Upon taking office, he nominated Strauss' daughter Monika Hohlmeier as State Minister for Education and Cultural Affairs.

In his capacity as Minister-President, Stoiber served as President of the Bundesrat in 1995/96. In 1998, he also succeeded Theo Waigel as chairman of the CSU.

During Stoiber's 14 years leading Bavaria, the state solidified its position as one of Germany's richest. Already by 1998, under his leadership, the state had privatized more than $3 billion worth of state-owned businesses and used that money to invest in new infrastructure and provide venture capital for new companies. He was widely regarded a central figure in building one of Europe's most powerful regional economies, attracting thousands of hi-tech, engineering and media companies and reducing unemployment to half the national average.

Candidate for Chancellor, 2002
In 2002, Stoiber politically outmaneuvered CDU chairwoman, Angela Merkel, and was declared the CDU/CSU's candidate for the office of chancellor by practically the entire leadership of the CSU's sister party CDU, challenging Gerhard Schröder. At that time, Merkel had generally been seen as a transitional chair and was strongly opposed by the CDU's male leaders, often called the party's "crown princess".

In the run up to the 2002 national elections, the CSU/CDU held a huge lead in the opinion polls and Stoiber famously remarked that "...this election is like a football match where it's the second half and my team is ahead by 2–0." However, on election day things had changed. The SPD had mounted a huge comeback, and the CDU/CSU was narrowly defeated (though both the SPD and CDU/CSU had 38.5% of the vote, the SPD was ahead by a small 6,000 vote margin, winning 251 seats to the CDU/CSU's 248). The election was one of modern Germany's closest votes.

Gerhard Schröder was re-elected as chancellor by the parliament in a coalition with the Greens, who had increased their vote share marginally. Many commentators faulted Stoiber's reaction to the floods in eastern Germany, in the run-up to the election, as a contributory factor in his party's poor electoral result and defeat. In addition, Schröder distinguished himself from his opponent by taking an active stance against the upcoming United States-led Iraq War. His extensive campaigning on this stance was widely seen as swinging the election to the SPD in the weeks running up to the election.

Later political career
Stoiber subsequently led the CSU to an absolute majority in the 2003 Bavarian state elections, for the third time in a row, winning this time 60.7% of the votes and a two-thirds majority in the Landtag. This was the widest margin ever achieved by a German party in any state.

Between 2003 and 2004, Stoiber served as co-chair (alongside Franz Müntefering) of the First Commission on the modernization of the federal state (Föderalismuskommission I), which had been established to reform the division of powers between federal and state authorities in Germany. In February 2004, he became a candidate of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder for the presidency of the European Commission but he decided not to run for this office.

Stoiber had ambitions to run again for the chancellorship, but Merkel secured the nomination, and in November 2005 she won the general election. He was slated to join Merkel's first grand coalition cabinet as Economics minister. However, on 1 November 2005, he announced his decision to stay in Bavaria, due to personnel changes on the SPD side of the coalition (Franz Müntefering resigned as SPD chairman) and an unsatisfactory apportionment of competences between himself and designated Science minister Annette Schavan. Stoiber also resigned his seat in the 16th Bundestag, being a member from 18 October to 8 November.

Subsequently, criticism grew in the CSU, where other politicians had to scale back their ambitions after Stoiber's decision to stay in Bavaria. On 18 January 2007, he announced his decision to stand down from the posts of minister-president and party chairman by 30 September. Günther Beckstein, then Bavarian state minister of the interior, succeeded him as minister-president and Erwin Huber as party chairman, defeating Horst Seehofer at a convention at 18 September 2007 with 58,1% of the votes. Both Beckstein and Huber resigned after the 2008 state elections, in which the CSU vote dropped to 43,4% and the party had to form a coalition with another party for the first time since 1966.

Life after politics
Stoiber was first appointed in 2007 as a special adviser to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso to chair the "High level group on administrative burdens", made up of national experts, NGOs, business and industry organizations. Quickly nicknamed the "Stoiber Group", it produced a report in July 2014 with several proposals on streamlining the regulatory process. Stoiber was re-appointed in December 2014 by Jean-Claude Juncker to the same role, from which he resigned after one year in late 2015.

Since his retirement from German politics in 2007, Stoiber has worked as a lawyer and held paid and unpaid positions, including:

 * Bundesliga Foundation, Member of the Board of Trustees
 * Commerzbank, Member of the Central Advisory Board
 * Deloitte Germany, chairman of the Advisory Board (since 2009)
 * Donner & Reuschel, Member of the Advisory Board
 * FC Bayern Munich, Member of the Supervisory Board of the stock corporation and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the club.
 * German-Russian Raw Materials Forum, Member of the Presidium
 * Hanns Seidel Foundation, Member
 * Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, Member of the Honorary Senate
 * Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Member of the Board of Trustees
 * Munich Security Conference, Member of the Advisory Council
 * Nürnberger Beteiligungs-Aktiengesellschaft, Member of the Supervisory Board
 * ProSiebenSat.1 Media, Member of the advisory board (since 2011)

Stoiber was a CSU delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2017.

Foreign policy
In his capacity as Minister-President, Stoiber made 58 foreign trips, including to China (1995, 2003), Israel (2001), Egypt (2001), India (2004, 2007) and South Korea (2007).

In 2002, Stoiber publicly expressed support for the United States in their policy toward Iraq. During his election campaign, he made clear his opposition to war, and his support for the introduction of weapons inspectors to Iraq without preconditions as a way of avoiding war, and he criticized Schröder for harming the German-American alliance by not calling President George W. Bush and discussing the issue privately. He also attacked German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer for his criticism of the U.S. position.

Stoiber is known for backing Vladimir Putin and there have been comparisons to Gerhard Schröder. One author called Stoiber a "Moscow's Trojan Horse". Putin is known to have given Stoiber "extreme forms of flattery" and privileges such as a private dinner at Putin's residence outside Moscow.

European integration
Stoiber has been said to be skeptical of Germany's decision to adopt the euro. In 1997, he joined the ministers-president of two other German states, Kurt Biedenkopf and Gerhard Schröder, in making the case for a five-year delay in Europe's currency union. When the European Commission recommended that Greece be allowed to join the eurozone in 1998, he demanded that the country be barred from adopting the common currency for several years instead. He is a staunch opponent of Turkey's integration into the European Union, claiming that its non-Christian culture would dilute the Union. At the same time, Stoiber has repeatedly insisted he is a "good European" who is keen, for instance, on forging an EU-wide foreign policy, replete with a single European army. Earlier, in 1993, he had told German newspapers: "I want a simple confederation. That means the nation-states maintain their dominant role, at least as far as internal matters are concerned."

Economic policy
While the conservative wing of the German political spectrum, primarily formed of the CDU and CSU, enjoys considerable support, this support tends to be less extended to Stoiber. He enjoys considerably more support in his home state of Bavaria than in the rest of Germany, where CDU chairwoman Angela Merkel is more popular. This has its reasons: Merkel supports a kind of fiscal conservatism, but a more liberal social policy. Stoiber, on the other hand, favors a more conservative approach to both fiscal and social matters, and while this ensures him the religious vote, strongest in Bavaria, it has weakened his support at the national level.

In 2005, Stoiber successfully lobbied Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceuticals group, to move the headquarters of its Sandoz subsidiary to Munich, making it one of Europe's highest-profile corporate relocations that year as well as a significant boost to Stoiber's attempts to build up Bavaria as a pharmaceuticals and biotechnology center.

During his time as Minister-President of Bavaria, Stoiber pushed for the construction of a roughly 40-kilometer high-speed magnetic-levitation link from Munich's main station to its airport, to be built by Transrapid International, a consortium including ThyssenKrupp and Munich-based Siemens. After he left office, the German federal government abandoned the plans in 2008 because of spiraling costs of as much as €3.4 billion.

Domestic policy
Stoiber, as a minister in the state of Bavaria, was widely known for advocating a reduction in the number of asylum seekers Germany accepts, something that prompted critics to label him xenophobic, anti-Turkish and anti-Islam. In the late 1990s, he criticized the incoming Chancellor Gerhard Schröder for saying that he would work hard in the interest of Germans and people living in Germany. Stoiber's remarks drew heavy criticism in the press.

When Germany's Federal Constitutional Court decided in 1995 that a Bavarian law requiring a crucifix to be hung in each of the state's 40,000 classrooms was unconstitutional, Stoiber said he would not order the removal of crucifixes "for the time being", and asserted that he was under no obligation to remove them in schools where parents unanimously opposed such action.

During his 2002 election campaign, Stoiber indicated he would not ban same-sex marriages—sanctioned by the Schröder government—a policy he had vehemently objected to when it was introduced.

Media policy
Stoiber has been a staunch advocate of changes in German law that would give more power to owners of private TV channels. In 1995, he publicly called for the abolition of Germany's public television service ARD and a streamlining of its regional services, adding that he and Minister-President Kurt Biedenkopf of Saxony would break the contract ARD has with regional governments if reforms were not undertaken. However, when European Commissioner for Competition Karel van Miert unveiled ideas for reforming the rules governing the financing of public service broadcasters in 1998, Stoiber led the way in rejecting moves to reform established practice.

Comments on East Germany
During the run-up to the German general election in 2005, which was held ahead of schedule, Stoiber created controversy through a campaign speech held in the beginning of August 2005 in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. He said, "I do not accept that the East [of Germany] will again decide who will be Germany's chancellor. It cannot be allowed that the frustrated determine Germany's fate." People in the new federal states of Germany (the former German Democratic Republic) were offended by Stoiber's remarks. While the CSU attempted to portray them as "misinterpreted", Stoiber created further controversy when he claimed that "if it was like Bavaria everywhere, there wouldn't be any problems. But unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, we have everywhere some sections of the populace not as intelligent as in Bavaria." The tone of the comments was exacerbated by a perception by some within Germany of the state of Bavaria as "arrogant".

Many, including members of the CDU, attribute Stoiber's comments and behavior as a contributing factor to the CDU's losses in the 2005 general election. He was accused by many in the CDU/CSU of offering "half-hearted" support to Angela Merkel, with some even accusing him of being reluctant to support a female candidate from the East. (This also contrasted unfavorably with Merkel's robust support for his candidacy in the 2002 election.) He has insinuated that votes were lost because of the choice of a female candidate. He came under heavy fire for these comments from press and politicians alike, especially since he himself lost almost 10% of the Bavarian vote—a dubious feat in itself as Bavarians tend to consistently vote conservatively. Nonetheless, a poll has suggested over 9% may have voted differently if the conservative candidate was a man from the West, although this does not clearly show if such a candidate would have gained or lost votes for the conservatives.

BayernLB activities
When the Croatian National Bank turned down BayernLB's original bid to take over the local arm of Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International, this drew strong criticism from Stoiber, who said the decision was "unacceptable" and a "severe strain" for Bavaria's relations with Croatia. Croatia was seeking to join the European Union at the time. The central bank's board later reviewed and accepted BayernLB's offer of 1.6 billion euros. The investment in Hypo Group Alpe Adria was part of a series of ill-fated investments, which later forced BayernLB to take a 10 billion-euro bailout in the financial crisis.

European Commission job
In September 2015, Emily O'Reilly, the European Ombudsman, received a complaint from two NGOs, Corporate Europe Observatory and Friends of the Earth, according to which Stoiber's appointment as special adviser on the commission's better regulation agenda broke internal rules on appointments.

Alleged intentions for a coup
In 2024, Wolfgang Schäuble's memoirs “Erinnerungen. Mein Leben in der Politik” (Transl: “Memories. My Life in Politics”) published posthumously. In it, Schäuble claims that in 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis at the time, Stoiber wanted to persuade him to overthrow cancellor Angela Merkel in order to become chancellor himself. Stoiber commented on that: “I have had as many personal and confidential conversations with few colleagues in my life from the 1980s until the last few years as with my long-standing and close colleague Wolfgang Schäuble. I have never commented on reports about it and of course that still applies to me today after his death."

Personal life
Stoiber is Roman Catholic. He is married to Karin Stoiber. They have three children: Constanze (born 1971, married Hausmann), Veronica (born 1977, married Saß), Dominic (born 1980) and five grandchildren: Johannes (1999), Benedikt (2001), Theresa Marie (2005), Ferdinand (2009) and another grandson (2011).

Stoiber is a keen football fan and operative. In his youth, he played for local football side BCF Wolfratshausen. Stoiber serves as Member of the Supervisory Board of FC Bayern München AG (the stock corporation that runs the professional football section) and Chairman of the Administrative Advisory Board of FC Bayern Munich e.V. (the club that owns the majority of the club corporation).

Before the 2002 election, FC Bayern general manager Uli Hoeneß expressed his support for Stoiber and the CSU. Football legend, former FC Bayern president and DFB vice president Franz Beckenbauer showed his support for Stoiber by letting him join the Germany national football team on their flight home from Japan after the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

Honours and awards

 * 1984: Bavarian Order of Merit
 * 1996: Karl Valentin Order
 * 1996: Grand Order of King Dmitar Zvonimir
 * 1999: Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Romania
 * 2000: Orden wider den tierischen Ernst
 * 2002: Commander of the Legion of Honour
 * 2003: Officer of the Ordre national du Québec
 * 2004: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
 * 2005: Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold with Sash for Services to the Republic of Austria
 * 2006: Grand Cross of Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
 * 2007: Large Gold Medal of the province of Upper Austria
 * 2007: Honorary degree awarded by the Sogang University
 * 2008: Steiger Award
 * 2009: Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg

Literature

 * Michael Stiller: Edmund Stoiber: der Kandidat. Econ, München 2002, ISBN 3-430-18786-9.
 * Jürgen Roth, Peter Köhler: Edmund G. Stoiber: Weltstaatsmann und Freund des Volkes. Eichborn, Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-8218-3584-2.
 * Jule Philippi: Wer für alles offen ist, ist nicht ganz dicht. Weisheiten des Edmund Stoiber. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-499-62248-9.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Edmund Stoiber