text:
Harlan Ellison

Harlan Jay Ellison (May 27, 1934 – June 28, 2018) was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction and for his outspoken, combative personality. His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Some of his best-known works include the 1967 Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", considered by some to be the single greatest episode of the Star Trek franchise (he subsequently wrote a book about the experience that includes his original teleplay), his A Boy and His Dog cycle (which was made into a film), and his short stories "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman". He was also editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.

Early life and career
Ellison was born to a Jewish family in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 27, 1934, the son of Serita (née Rosenthal) and Louis Laverne Ellison, a dentist and jeweler. He had an older sister, Beverly (Rabnick), who was born in 1926. She died in 2010 without having spoken to him since their mother's funeral in 1976. His family subsequently moved to Painesville, Ohio, but returned to Cleveland in 1949, following his father's death. Ellison frequently ran away from home (in an interview with Tom Snyder he would later claim it was due to discrimination by his high school peers), taking an array of odd jobs—including, by age 18, "tuna fisherman off the coast of Galveston, itinerant crop-picker down in New Orleans, hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, nitroglycerine truck driver in North Carolina, short-order cook, cab driver, lithographer, book salesman, floorwalker in a department store, door-to-door brush salesman, and as a youngster, an actor in several productions at the Cleveland Play House". In 1947, a fan letter he wrote to Real Fact Comics became his first published writing.

Ellison attended Ohio State University for 18 months (1951–53) before being expelled. He said the expulsion was for hitting a professor, a certain Dr. Shedd, who had denigrated his writing ability. Over the next 20 or so years he sent that professor a copy of every story that he published.

Ellison published two serialized stories in the Cleveland News during 1949, and he sold a story to EC Comics early in the 1950s. During this period, Ellison was an active and visible member of science fiction fandom, and published his own science fiction fanzines, such as Dimensions (which had previously been the Bulletin of the Cleveland Science Fantasy Society for the Cleveland Science Fantasy Society, and later Science Fantasy Bulletin. )

Ellison moved to New York City in 1955 to pursue a writing career, primarily in science fiction. Over the next two years, he published more than 100 short stories and articles. The short stories collected as Sex Gang — which Ellison described in a 2012 interview as "mainstream erotica" — date from this period.

He served in the U.S. Army from 1957 to 1959. His first novel, Web of the City, was published during his military service in 1958, and he said that he had written the bulk of it while undergoing basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. He served in the Public Information Office at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where he wrote articles and reviews for the post's weekly newspaper.

After leaving the army, he relocated to Chicago, where he edited Rogue magazine.

Hollywood and beyond
Ellison moved to California in 1962 and began selling his writing to Hollywood. Ellison also sold scripts to many television shows: Burke's Law (4 episodes), Route 66, The Outer Limits, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Star Trek, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2 episodes), Cimarron Strip and The Flying Nun.

Ellison's screenplay for the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" is often considered the best of the 79 episodes in the series.

He co-wrote the screenplay for The Oscar (1966), starring Stephen Boyd and Tony Bennett.

In 1965, he participated in the second and third Selma to Montgomery marches, led by Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1966, in an article that Esquire magazine later named as the best magazine piece ever written, the journalist Gay Talese wrote a profile of Frank Sinatra. The article, entitled "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold", briefly describes a verbal clash between Sinatra and Ellison, in which the crooner took exception to Ellison's boots during a billiards game Ellison was playing with Omar Sharif, Leo Durocher and Peter Falk.

Ellison was hired as a writer for Walt Disney Studios, but was fired on his first day after Roy O. Disney overheard him in the studio commissary joking about making a pornographic animated film featuring Disney characters.

Ellison continued to publish short fiction and nonfiction pieces in various publications, including some of his best known stories. "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" (1965) is a celebration of civil disobedience against repressive authority. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967) is a story where five humans are tormented by an all-knowing computer throughout eternity. The story was the basis of a 1995 computer game; Ellison participated in the game's design and provided the voice of the god-computer AM. Another story, "A Boy and His Dog", examines the nature of friendship and love in a violent, post-apocalyptic world and was made into the 1975 film of the same name, starring Don Johnson.

In 1967, Ellison edited the Dangerous Visions collection, which attracted 'special citation at the 26th World SF Convention for editing "the most significant and controversial SF book published in 1967."' In his introduction Isaac Asimov described it epitomising a 'second revolution' in Science Fiction as 'science receded and modern fictional techniques came to the fore.'

From 1968 to 1970, Ellison wrote a regular column on television for the Los Angeles Free Press. Titled "The Glass Teat", Ellison's column examined television's impact on the politics and culture of the time, including its presentations of sex, politics, race, the Vietnam War, and violence. The essays were collected in two anthologies, The Glass Teat: Essays of Opinion on Television followed by The Other Glass Teat.

Ellison served as creative consultant to the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone science fiction TV series and Babylon 5. As a member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), he had voice-over credits for shows, including The Pirates of Dark Water, Mother Goose and Grimm, Space Cases, Phantom 2040, and Babylon 5, as well as making an onscreen appearance in the Babylon 5 episode "The Face of the Enemy".

A frequent guest on the Los Angeles science fiction / fantasy culture radio show Hour 25, hosted by Mike Hodel, Ellison took over as host when Hodel died. Ellison's tenure was from May 1986 to June 1987.

Ellison's short story "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" (1992) was selected for inclusion in the 1993 edition of The Best American Short Stories.

Ellison as an audio actor/reader was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children twice and has won several Audie Awards.

In 2014, Ellison made a guest appearance on the album Finding Love in Hell by the stoner rock band Leaving Babylon, reading his piece "The Silence" (originally published in Mind Fields) as an introduction to the song "Dead to Me."

Ellison's official website, harlanellison.com, was launched in 1995 as a fan page; for several years, Ellison was a regular poster in its discussion forum.

Personal life and death
Ellison married five times; each relationship ended within a few years, except the last. His first wife was Charlotte Stein, whom he married in 1956. They divorced in 1960, and he later described the marriage as "four years of hell as sustained as the whine of a generator." Later that year he married Billie Joyce Sanders; they divorced in 1963. His 1966 marriage to Loretta Patrick lasted only seven weeks. In 1976, he married Lori Horowitz. He was 41 and she was 19, and he later said of the marriage, "I was desperately in love with her, but it was a stupid marriage on my part." They were divorced after eight months. He briefly had a relationship with actress Grace Lee Whitney allegedly ending it when he caught her smoking dope in his house. He and Susan Toth married in 1986, and they remained together, living in Los Angeles, until his death 32 years later. Susan died in August 2020.

Ellison described himself as a Jewish atheist.

In 1994, he had a heart attack and was hospitalized for quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery. From 2010, he received treatment for clinical depression.

In September 2007, Ellison attended the Midwestern debut of the documentary about his life, Dreams with Sharp Teeth, at the Cleveland Public Library in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. This would be Ellison's last public appearance in his hometown.

On about October 10, 2014, Ellison had a stroke. Although his speech and cognition were unimpaired, he suffered paralysis on his right side, for which he was expected to spend several weeks in physical therapy before being released from the hospital.

Ellison died in his sleep at his home in Los Angeles on the morning of June 28, 2018. His literary estate is currently executed by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski.

Pseudonyms
Ellison on occasion used the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird to alert members of the public to situations in which he felt his creative contribution to a project had been mangled by others, beyond repair, typically Hollywood producers or studios (see also Alan Smithee). The first such work to which he signed the name was "The Price of Doom", an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (though it was misspelled as Cord Wainer Bird in the credits). An episode of Burke's Law ("Who Killed Alex Debbs?") credited to Ellison contains a character given this name, played by Sammy Davis Jr.

The "Cordwainer Bird" moniker is a tribute to fellow SF writer Paul M. A. Linebarger, better known by his pen name, Cordwainer Smith. The origin of the word "cordwainer" is shoemaker (from working with shell cordovan leather for shoes). The term used by Linebarger was meant to imply the industriousness of the pulp author. Ellison said, in interviews and in his writing, that his version of the pseudonym was meant to mean "a shoemaker for birds". Since he used the pseudonym mainly for works from which he wanted to distance himself, it may be understood to mean that "this work is for the birds" or that it is of as much use as shoes to a bird. Stephen King once said he thought that it meant that Ellison was giving people who mangled his work a literary version of "the bird" (given credence by Ellison himself in his own essay titled "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas, Toto", describing his experience with the Starlost television series).

The Bird moniker became a character in one of Ellison's own stories. In his 1978 book Strange Wine, Ellison explains the origins of the Bird and goes on to state that Philip José Farmer wrote Cordwainer into the Wold Newton family that the latter writer had developed. The thought of such a whimsical object lesson being related to such lights as Doc Savage, The Shadow, Tarzan, and all the other pulp heroes prompted Ellison to play with the concept, resulting in "The New York Review of Bird", in which an annoyed Bird uncovers the darker secrets of the New York literary establishment before beginning a pulpish slaughter of the same.

Other pseudonyms Ellison used during his career include Jay Charby, Sley Harson, Ellis Hart, John Magnus, Paul Merchant, Pat Roeder, Ivar Jorgenson, Derry Tiger, Harlan Ellis and Jay Solo.

Temperament
Ellison had a reputation for being abrasive and argumentative. He generally agreed with this assessment, and a dust jacket from one of his books described him as "possibly the most contentious person on Earth." Ellison filed numerous grievances and attempted lawsuits; during a contract dispute with Signet/NAL Books binding cigarette ads into one of his paperbacks, he sent them dozens of bricks postage due, followed by a dead gopher. In an October 2017 piece in Wired, Ellison was dubbed "Sci-Fi's Most Controversial Figure."

At Stephen King's request, Ellison provided a description of himself and his writing in Danse Macabre (1981): "My work is foursquare for chaos. I spend my life personally, and my work professionally, keeping the soup boiling. Gadfly is what they call you when you are no longer dangerous; I much prefer troublemaker, malcontent, desperado. I see myself as a combination of Zorro and Jiminy Cricket. My stories go out from here and raise hell. From time to time some denigrater or critic with umbrage will say of my work, 'He only wrote that to shock.' I smile and nod. Precisely."

Star Trek
Ellison repeatedly criticized how Star Trek creator and producer Gene Roddenberry (and others) rewrote his original script for the 1967 episode "The City on the Edge of Forever". Despite his objections, Ellison kept his own name on the shooting script instead of using "Cordwainer Bird" to indicate displeasure (see above).

Ellison's original script was first published in the 1976 anthology Six Science Fiction Plays, edited by Roger Elwood. The aired version was adapted for the Star Trek Fotonovel series in 1977. In 1995, Borderlands Press published The City on the Edge of Forever, with nearly 300 pages, comprising an essay by Ellison, four versions of the teleplay, and eight "Afterwords" contributed by other parties. He greatly expanded the introduction for the paperback edition, in which he explained what he called a "fatally inept" treatment.

Both versions of the script won awards: Ellison's original script won the 1968 Writers Guild Award for best episodic drama in television, while the shooting script won the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

On March 13, 2009, Ellison sued CBS Paramount Television, seeking payment of 25% of net receipts from merchandising, publishing, and other income from the episode since 1967; the suit also names the Writers Guild of America for allegedly failing to act on Ellison's behalf. On October 23, 2009, Variety magazine reported that a settlement had been reached.

Vietnam War opposition and AggieCon I
Ellison was among those who in 1968 signed an anti-Vietnam War advertisement in Galaxy Science Fiction. In 1969, Ellison was Guest of Honor at Texas A&M University's first science fiction convention, AggieCon, where he reportedly referred to the university's Corps of Cadets as "America's next generation of Nazis", inspired in part by the Vietnam War. Although the university was no longer solely a military school (from 1965), the student body was predominantly made up of cadet members. Between Ellison's anti-military remarks and a food fight that broke out in the ballroom of the hotel where the gathering was held (although, according to Ellison in 2000, the food fight actually started in a Denny's because the staff disappeared and they could not get their check), the school's administration almost refused to approve the science fiction convention the next year and no guest of honor was invited for the next two AggieCons. Ellison was subsequently invited back as Guest of Honor for AggieCon V (1974).

The Last Dangerous Visions
The Last Dangerous Visions (TLDV), the third volume of Ellison's anthology series, was originally announced for publication in 1973, but had not been published. Nearly 150 writers, many now dead, submitted works for the volume. In 1993, Ellison threatened to sue the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) for publishing "Himself in Anachron", a short story written by Cordwainer Smith and originally sold to Ellison for the anthology by his widow. The NESFA later reached an amicable settlement after it was revealed that the story contract had expired, allowing them to legally acquire it for publication.

British science fiction author Christopher Priest criticized Ellison's editorial practices in an article entitled "The Book on the Edge of Forever", later expanded into a book. Priest documented a half-dozen unfulfilled promises by Ellison to publish TLDV within a year of the statement. Priest claims that he submitted a story at Ellison's request, which Ellison retained for several months until Priest withdrew the story and demanded that Ellison return the manuscript. Ellison was incensed by "The Book on the Edge of Forever" and, personally or by proxy, threatened Priest on numerous occasions after its publication.

In November 2020, the executor of the Harlan Ellison estate, J. Michael Straczynski, announced on Patreon that he was proceeding with the final preparations for the publication of TLDV with the proceeds to go to the Harlan and Susan Ellison Trust. The book was expected to be published in April 2021, as significant publisher interest was expressed.

Christopher Priest was unimpressed, saying that Straczynski was "in the same sort of unenviable position as Trump's caddie", but as an experienced professional would possibly work something out. He added, "I kind of lost interest in all that years ago. Ellison clearly did too, along with everyone else. (Although I gather he went on with his magical thinking if anyone asked when he was going to deliver.) Many of the stories were withdrawn, because Ellison acted like a dick. Of the ones that remain, most of them are by writers who are now deceased, so the rights have expired and the estates would have to be traced. A lot of the writers have disowned their stories as juvenilia, or outdated, or simply because Ellison was acting like a dick."

Despite early hopes of a 2021 release for TLDV, 2021 came and went with no book. An October 2021 'progress report' from Straczynski revealed that the book was still in preparation. On May 2, 2022, Straczynski announced that the book would be published in 2023. On July 10, 2022, Straczynski announced on Twitter that The Last Dangerous Visions will be published on September 1, 2024, by Blackstone Publishers.

I, Robot
Shortly after the release of Star Wars (1977), Ben Roberts contacted Ellison to develop a script based on Isaac Asimov's I, Robot short story collection for Warner Bros.; Ellison and Asimov had been long-time friends, so Ellison may be presumed to have attached particular significance to the project. In a meeting with the Head of Production at Warners, Robert Shapiro, Ellison concluded that Shapiro was commenting on the script without having read it and accused him of having the "intellectual and cranial capacity of an artichoke". Shortly afterwards, Ellison was dropped from the project. Without Ellison, the film came to a dead end, because subsequent scripts were unsatisfactory to potential directors. After a change in studio heads, Warner allowed Ellison's script to be serialized in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine and published in book form. The 2004 film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, has no connection to Ellison's script.

Allegations of assault on Charles Platt
In 1985, Ellison allegedly publicly assaulted author, journalist and computer programmer Charles Platt at the Nebula Awards banquet. Platt did not pursue legal action against Ellison and the two men later signed a "non-aggression pact", promising never to discuss the incident again nor to have any contact with one another. Platt claims that Ellison often publicly boasted about the incident.

Support of Ed Kramer
Ellison voiced strong support for Ed Kramer, founder of Dragon Con, after Kramer was accused of sexual abuse of children in 2000. Ellison and others disputed the evidence against Kramer, and also alleged Kramer was being held in jail in violation of his right to a speedy trial.

When writer Nancy A. Collins spoke up against Kramer, Ellison led a long-standing feud against her before Kramer entered an Alford plea in 2013.

2006 Hugo Awards ceremony
Ellison was presented with a special committee award at the 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony. When Ellison got to the podium, presenter Connie Willis asked him "Are you going to be good?" When she asked the question a second time, Ellison put the microphone in his mouth, to the crowd's laughter. He then placed his hand on her breast during an embrace. Ellison subsequently complained that Willis refused to acknowledge his apology.

Lawsuit against Fantagraphics
On September 20, 2006, Ellison sued comic book and magazine publisher Fantagraphics, stating they had defamed him in their book Comics As Art (We Told You So). The book recounts the history of Fantagraphics and discussed a lawsuit that resulted from a 1980 Ellison interview with Fantagraphics' industry news magazine, The Comics Journal. In this interview Ellison referred to comic book writer Michael Fleisher, calling him "bugfuck" and "derange-o". Fleisher lost his libel suit against Ellison and Fantagraphics on December 9, 1986.

Ellison, after reading unpublished drafts of the book on Fantagraphics's website, believed that he had been defamed by several anecdotes related to this incident. He sued in the Superior Court for the State of California, in Santa Monica. Fantagraphics attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed. In their motion to dismiss, Fantagraphics argued that the statements were both their personal opinions and generally believed to be true anecdotes. On February 12, 2007, the presiding judge ruled against Fantagraphics' anti-SLAPP motion for dismissal. On June 29, 2007, Ellison claimed that the litigation had been resolved pending Fantagraphics' removal of all references to the case from their website. No money or apologies changed hands in the settlement as posted on August 17, 2007.

Copyright suits
In a 1980 lawsuit against ABC and Paramount Pictures, Ellison and Ben Bova claimed that the TV series Future Cop was based on their short story "Brillo", winning a $337,000 judgement.

Ellison alleged that James Cameron's film The Terminator drew from material from an episode of the original Outer Limits which Ellison had scripted, "Soldier" (1964). Hemdale, the production company and the distributor Orion Pictures, settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and added a credit to the film which acknowledged Ellison's work. Cameron objected to this acknowledgement and has since labeled Ellison's claim a "nuisance suit". Some accounts of the settlement state that another Outer Limits episode written by Ellison, "Demon with a Glass Hand" (1964), was also claimed to have been plagiarized by the film, but Ellison stated that "Terminator was not stolen from 'Demon with a Glass Hand,' it was a ripoff of my OTHER Outer Limits script, 'Soldier.

In 1983, Marvel Comics released The Incredible Hulk #286, entitled "Hero", written by Bill Mantlo. Three issues later, Marvel put up a letter claiming that Mantlo adapted "Soldier" for use as a Hulk story, but they forgot to credit Ellison and it was pointed out by readers. In actuality, then-Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter signed off on the story, not having seen the Outer Limits episode it was based on and not realizing Mantlo copied it wholesale. The day the issue went to stands, he was contacted by an angry Ellison, who calmed down after Shooter admitted the error. Although he could have claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, Ellison only requested the same payment Mantlo got for the story, writer's credit and a lifetime subscription to everything Marvel published.

On April 24, 2000, Ellison sued Stephen Robertson for posting four stories to the usenet newsgroup "alt.binaries.e-book" without authorization. The other defendants were AOL and RemarQ, an internet service provider who owned servers hosting the newsgroup. Ellison alleged they had failed to halt copyright infringement in accordance with the "Notice and Takedown Procedure" outlined in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Robertson and RemarQ first settled with Ellison, and then AOL likewise settled with Ellison in June 2004, under conditions that were not made public. Since those settlements Ellison initiated legal action or takedown notices against more than 240 people who have allegedly distributed his writings on the Internet, saying, "If you put your hand in my pocket, you'll drag back six inches of bloody stump".

Awards
Ellison won eight Hugo Awards, a shared award for the screenplay of A Boy and his Dog that he counted as "half a Hugo", and two special awards from annual World SF Conventions; four Nebula Awards of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA); five Bram Stoker Awards of the Horror Writers Association (HWA); two Edgar Awards of the Mystery Writers of America; two World Fantasy Awards from annual conventions; and two Georges Méliès fantasy film awards. In 1987, Ellison was awarded the Inkpot Award.

In his 1981 book about the horror genre, Danse Macabre, Stephen King reviewed Ellison's collection Strange Wine and considered it one of the best horror books published between 1950 and 1980.

Ellison won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1993. HWA gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 and the World Horror Convention named him Grand Master in 2000. He was awarded the Gallun Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science Fiction from I-CON in 1997.

SFWA named him its 23rd Grand Master of fantasy and science fiction in 2006 and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2011. That year he also received the fourth J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction, presented by the UCR Libraries at the 2011 Eaton SF Conference, "Global Science Fiction".

, Ellison is the only three-time winner of the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. He won his other Nebula in the novella category.

He was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by International PEN, the international writers' union, in 1982. In 1990, Ellison was honored by International PEN for continuing commitment to artistic freedom and the battle against censorship. In 1998, he was awarded the "Defender of Liberty" award by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

In March 1998, the National Women's Committee of Brandeis University honored him with their 1998 Words, Wit, Wisdom award.

Ellison was named 2002's winner of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal's "Distinguished Skeptic Award", in recognition of his contributions to science and critical thinking. Ellison was presented with the award at the Skeptics Convention in Burbank, California, on June 22, 2002.

In December 2009, Ellison was nominated for a Grammy award in the category Best Spoken Word Album For Children for his reading of Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There for Blackstone Audio, Inc.

 * Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films (USA)
 * Golden Scroll (Best Writing – Career 1976)

 * American Mystery Award
 * "Soft Monkey" (best short story, 1988)

 * Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Reader's Poll
 * I, Robot screenplay (Special award, 1988)

 * Audie Awards
 * The Titanic Disaster Hearings: The Official Transcript of the 1912 Senatorial Investigation (Best Multi-Voiced Presentation, 1999)
 * City of Darkness (Best Solo Narration, 1999)
 * The Dybbuk (Audiobook Adapted from Another Medium, 2000)

 * Best American Short Stories
 * "The Man who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" (included in the 1993 anthology)

 * The Bradbury Award
 * Given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2000 to Harlan Ellison and Yuri Rasovsky for the radio series 2000X.
 * Bram Stoker Award
 * The Essential Ellison (best collection, 1987)
 * Harlan Ellison's Watching (best non-fiction, 1989 – tie)
 * Mefisto in Onyx (best novella, 1993 – tie)
 * "Chatting With Anubis" (best short story, 1995)
 * Lifetime Achievement Award, 1995
 * I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (best other media – audio, 1999)

 * British Fantasy Award
 * "Jeffty Is Five" (best short story, 1979)

 * British Science Fiction Award
 * Deathbird Stories (best collection, 1978)

 * Deathrealm Award
 * Chatting with Anubis (best short fiction, 1996)

 * Edgar Allan Poe Award
 * "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs" (best short story, 1974)
 * "Soft Monkey" (best short story, 1988)
 * Georges Melies Fantasy Film Award
 * Demon with a Glass Hand / The Outer Limits (Achievement in Science Fiction Television, 1972)
 * The City on the Edge of Forever / Star Trek (Achievement in Science Fiction Television, 1973)

 * Hugo Award
 * ""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman" (best short fiction, 1966)
 * "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (best short story, 1968)
 * The City on the Edge of Forever (best dramatic presentation, 1968)
 * Dangerous Visions (Worldcon special award, 1968)
 * "The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World" (best short story, 1969)
 * Again, Dangerous Visions (Worldcon special award for excellence in anthologizing, 1972)
 * "The Deathbird" (best novelette, 1974)
 * "Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W" (best novelette, 1975)
 * A Boy and His Dog (film – best dramatic presentation, 1976. The Hugo was originally given to L.Q. Jones, the film's producer and screenwriter. After the ceremony, Ellison complained that as author of the original story upon which Jones's screenplay was based, he deserved to share in the award. No extra Hugo statuette was available, so to mollify Ellison, he received a Hugo base, which he called his "half Hugo".)
 * "Jeffty Is Five" (best short story, 1978)
 * "Paladin of the Lost Hour" (best novelette, 1986)

 * International Horror Guild Award
 * 1994 Living Legend Award

 * Jupiter Award (Instructors of Science Fiction in Higher Education)
 * "The Deathbird" (best short story, 1973)
 * "Jeffty Is Five" (best short story, 1977)

 * Locus Poll Award
 * The Region Between (best short fiction, 1971)
 * Basilisk (best short fiction, 1973)
 * Again, Dangerous Visions (best anthology, 1973)
 * The Deathbird (best short fiction, 1974)
 * Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W (best novelette, 1975)
 * "Croatoan" (best short story, 1976)
 * "Jeffty Is Five" (best short story, 1978) (best short story of all time, 1999 online poll)
 * "Count the Clock that Tells the Time" (best short story, 1979)
 * "Djinn, No Chaser" (best novelette, 1983)
 * Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed (introduction) (best related non-fiction, 1985)
 * Medea: Harlan's World (best anthology, 1986)
 * Paladin of the Lost Hour (best novelette, 1986)
 * "With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole" (best short story, 1986)
 * Angry Candy (best collection, 1989)
 * The Function of Dream Sleep (best novelette, 1989)
 * "Eidolons" (best short story, 1989)
 * Mefisto in Onyx (best novella, 1994)
 * Slippage (best collection, 1998)

 * Nebula Award
 * ""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman" (best short story, 1966)
 * A Boy and His Dog (best novella, 1970)
 * "Jeffty Is Five" (best short story, 1978)
 * Grand Master Award (at Tempe, Arizona, May 6, 2006)
 * "How Interesting: A Tiny Man" (best short story, tied with Kij Johnson/"Ponies" 2011)

 * Prometheus Award
 * ""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman" (2015 Hall of Fame Inductee)

 * Writers Guild of America
 * Demon with a Glass Hand / The Outer Limits (Best Original Teleplay, 1965)
 * The City on the Edge of Forever / Star Trek (Best Original Teleplay, 1967)
 * Phoenix Without Ashes / The Starlost (Best Written Dramatic Episode, 1974)
 * Paladin of the Lost Hour / The Twilight Zone (Best Anthology Episode/Single Program, 1987)

 * Writers Guild of Canada
 * The Human Operators / The Outer Limits (2000)

 * World Fantasy Award
 * Angry Candy (Best Collection, 1989)
 * Lifetime Achievement Award, 1993

 * J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction
 * 2011 recipient (Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy, University of California–Riverside Libraries)

Parodies and pastiches of Ellison
In the 1970s artist and cartoonist Gordon Carleton wrote and drew a scripted slideshow called "City on the Edge of Whatever", which was a spoof of "The City on the Edge of Forever". Occasionally performed at Star Trek conventions, it features an irate writer named "Arlan Hellison" who screams at his producers, "Art defilers! Script assassins!"

Justice League of America #89 ("The Most Dangerous Dreams Of All") 1971, written by Mike Friedrich, is centered around a character named Harlequin Ellis. The character is smitten with Black Canary, and injects himself into Justice League adventures, taking on the role of different heroes in his attempts to woo her. Ellison himself had written several comic book scripts.

Ben Bova's novel The Starcrossed (1975), a roman à clef about Bova and Ellison's experience on The Starlost TV series, features a character "Ron Gabriel" who is a pastiche of Ellison. Bova's novel is dedicated to Ellison's pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird", who was credited as series creator on The Starlost per Ellison's demand. In the novel, "Ron Gabriel" requires the fictional series producers to credit him under the pseudonym "Victor Lawrence Talbot Frankenstein".

In Murder at the ABA (1976) by Isaac Asimov, the protagonist, Darius Just, was based on Ellison, as stated by Asimov in footnotes to the book itself, and in his autobiographical volume In Joy Still Felt.

Robert Silverberg named a character in his first novel, Revolt on Alpha C (1955), for Ellison, who was Silverberg's neighbor in New York City at the time he was writing the book. This was confirmed in a special edition on the occasion of Silverberg's 35th year in the business.

Sharyn McCrumb's mystery novel Bimbos of the Death Sun (1987) featured a cantankerous antagonist-turned-murder victim based on Ellison. Fans of Ellison sent him copies of the book, and upon meeting Ellison later that year at the Edgar Awards, Ellison told McCrumb he had read the book and thought it was good.

Ellison is a recurring minor character in the animated television series Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010–2013), voicing a fictionalized version of himself modeled on his appearance in the 1970s.

Ellison appeared as himself in an episode of The Simpsons ("Married to the Blob", 2014) in which he meets Bart and Milhouse, and parodies his contention that the film The Terminator used ideas from his stories.

title: Harlan Ellison


text:
Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi

Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi (هزارفنّ أحمد چلبی,; 1609 – 1640) was an Ottoman scientist, inventor, chemist, astronomer, physician, Andalusi musician, and poet from Istanbul, reported in the writings of traveler Evliya Çelebi to have achieved sustained unpowered flight.

Etymology of name
The title "Hezârfen", given by Evliyâ Çelebi to Ahmed Çelebi, is from Persian هزار hezār meaning -a thousand- + فنّ fann meaning -science together making it together Ahmed having talents in "a thousand of sciences (polymath).

Non-powered flight

The 17th century writings of Evliyâ Çelebi relate this story of Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi, circa 1630–1632:

"First, he practiced by flying over the pulpit of Okmeydanı eight or nine times with eagle wings, using the force of the wind. Then, as Sultan Murad Khan (Murad IV) was watching from the Sinan Pasha mansion at Sarayburnu, he flew from the very top of the Galata Tower (in contemporary Karaköy) and landed in the Doğancılar Square in Üsküdar, with the help of the south-west wind. Murad Khan then rewarded him for his feat with a sack of gold coins, saying: 'This man is uncanny: he is capable of doing anything he wishes. It is not right to surround oneself with such people'. True to his word, he then exiled Ahmed to Algeria, where the scientist remained until his death."

Legacy

 * One of 4 airports in Istanbul is named the "Hezarfen Airfield".
 * A 1996 feature-length film, "Istanbul Beneath My Wings" (İstanbul Kanatlarımın Altında) concerns the lives of Hezârfen Ahmet Çelebi, his brother and purported rocket aviator Lagari Hasan Çelebi (per the same single source, Çelebi, as the above story), and Ottoman society in the early 17th century, as witnessed and narrated by Evliya Çelebi.
 * The Turkish children’s TV show “Little Hezarfen” (Küçük Hezarfen) is about Hezârfen Ahmet Çelebi’s childhood, though the events that occur within the show are likely fictitious and/or exaggerated. A main theme within the show, however, is Hezarfen’s desire to build wings that allow him to fly.

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

title: Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi


text:
Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt

Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt (June 2, 1885 – December 30, 1964) was a German neurologist and neuropathologist. Although he is typically credited as the physician to first describe the Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, this has been disputed. He was born in Harburg an der Elbe and died in Munich.

Biography
Creutzfeldt was born into a medical family in Harburg, which was incorporated into Hamburg in 1937. In 1903, at the age of 18, he was drafted into the German army and spent his service stationed in Kiel.

Afterwards, he attended the School of Medicine of the University of Jena and the University of Rostock, receiving his doctorate at the latter in 1909. Part of his practical training was undertaken at St. Georg – Hospital in Hamburg. After qualification he sought adventure as a ship's surgeon, voyaging the Pacific Ocean, taking the opportunity to study local crafts, linguistics, and tropical plants.

After returning to Germany in 1912, Creutzfeldt worked at the Neurological Institute in Frankfurt am Main, at the psychiatric-neurological clinics in Breslau, Kiel and Berlin, and at the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie in Munich.

During the First World War, Creutzfeldt was deployed as a reserve medical officer and survived the sinking of the auxiliary cruiser SMS Greif, on which he was embarked. After being captured on February 29, 1916, he was repatriated as a doctor in May of that year and served in the Imperial German Navy until the end of the war in 1918.

Creutzfeldt was habilitated at Kiel in 1920, and in 1925 became Extraordinarius of psychiatry and neurology. In 1938 he was appointed professor and director of the university psychiatric and neurological division in Kiel. He helped to recognize a neurodegenerative disease, with Alfons Maria Jakob, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in which the brain tissue develops holes and takes on a sponge-like texture. It is now known it is due to a type of infectious protein called a prion. Prions are misfolded proteins which replicate by converting their properly folded counterparts.

In Nazi Germany, Creutzfeldt became a Patron Member of Heinrich Himmler's SS from 1932 to 1933.

Later life
Creutzfeldt was 54 years old when the Second World War broke out. He was unmoved by the Nazi regime and was able to save some people from death in concentration camps and also managed to save almost all of his patients from being murdered under the Nazi Aktion T4 involuntary euthanasia program, while most mental patients identified by T4 personnel were gassed or poisoned at separate euthanasia clinics such as Hadamar Euthanasia Centre. During the war, bombing raids destroyed his home and clinic.

After the war he was director of the University of Kiel for six months, before being dismissed by the British occupation forces. His efforts to rebuild the university caused a series of conflicts with the British because he wanted to allow more former army officers to study there. Creutzfeldt resigned from his work at Kiel in 1953 in order to pursue life as professor emeritus in Munich.

Personal life
He was married to Clara Sombart, a daughter of economist Werner Sombart. They had five children, among them neurologist Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt and Werner Creutzfeldt (1924–2006), a renowned German internist. He died in December 1964 in Munich.

title: Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt


text:
Holmium

Holmium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ho and atomic number 67. It is a rare-earth element and the eleventh member of the lanthanide series. It is a relatively soft, silvery, fairly corrosion-resistant and malleable metal. Like many other lanthanides, holmium is too reactive to be found in native form, as pure holmium slowly forms a yellowish oxide coating when exposed to air. When isolated, holmium is relatively stable in dry air at room temperature. However, it reacts with water and corrodes readily, and also burns in air when heated.

In nature, holmium occurs together with the other rare-earth metals (like thulium). It is a relatively rare lanthanide, making up 1.4 parts per million of the Earth's crust, an abundance similar to tungsten. Holmium was discovered through isolation by Swedish chemist Per Theodor Cleve. It was also independently discovered by Jacques-Louis Soret and Marc Delafontaine, who together observed it spectroscopically in 1878. Its oxide was first isolated from rare-earth ores by Cleve in 1878. The element's name comes from Holmia, the Latin name for the city of Stockholm.

Like many other lanthanides, holmium is found in the minerals monazite and gadolinite and is usually commercially extracted from monazite using ion-exchange techniques. Its compounds in nature and in nearly all of its laboratory chemistry are trivalently oxidized, containing Ho(III) ions. Trivalent holmium ions have fluorescent properties similar to many other rare-earth ions (while yielding their own set of unique emission light lines), and thus are used in the same way as some other rare earths in certain laser and glass-colorant applications.

Holmium has the highest magnetic permeability and magnetic saturation of any element and is thus used for the pole pieces of the strongest static magnets. Because holmium strongly absorbs neutrons, it is also used as a burnable poison in nuclear reactors.

Properties
Holmium is the eleventh member of the lanthanide series. In the periodic table, it appears in period 6, between the lanthanides dysprosium to its left and erbium to its right, and above the actinide einsteinium.

Physical properties
With a boiling point of 3000 K, holmium is the sixth most volatile lanthanide after ytterbium, europium, samarium, thulium and dysprosium. At standard temperature and pressure, holmium, like many of the second half of the lanthanides, normally assumes a hexagonally close-packed (hcp) structure. Its 67 electrons are arranged in the configuration [Xe] 4f11 6s2, so that it has thirteen valence electrons filling the 4f and 6s subshells.

Holmium, like all of the lanthanides, is paramagnetic at standard temperature and pressure. However, holmium is ferromagnetic at temperatures below 19 K. It has the highest magnetic moment ($10.6 μ_{B}$) of any naturally occurring element and possesses other unusual magnetic properties. When combined with yttrium, it forms highly magnetic compounds.

Chemical properties
Holmium metal tarnishes slowly in air, forming a yellowish oxide layer that has an appearance similar to that of iron rust. It burns readily to form holmium(III) oxide:

 * 4 Ho + 3 O2 → 2 Ho2O3

It is a relatively soft and malleable element that is fairly corrosion-resistant and chemically stable in dry air at standard temperature and pressure. In moist air and at higher temperatures, however, it quickly oxidizes, forming a yellowish oxide. In pure form, holmium possesses a metallic, bright silvery luster.

Holmium is quite electropositive: on the Pauling electronegativity scale, it has an electronegativity of 1.23. It is generally trivalent. It reacts slowly with cold water and quickly with hot water to form holmium(III) hydroxide:
 * 2 Ho (s) + 6 H2O (l) → 2 Ho(OH)3 (aq) + 3 H2 (g)

Holmium metal reacts with all the stable halogens:
 * 2 Ho (s) + 3 F2 (g) → 2 HoF3 (s) [pink]

 * 2 Ho (s) + 3 Cl2 (g) → 2 HoCl3 (s) [yellow]

 * 2 Ho (s) + 3 Br2 (g) → 2 HoBr3 (s) [yellow]

 * 2 Ho (s) + 3 I2 (g) → 2 HoI3 (s) [yellow]

Holmium dissolves readily in dilute sulfuric acid to form solutions containing the yellow Ho(III) ions, which exist as a [Ho(OH2)9]3+ complexes:

 * 2 Ho (s) + 3 H2SO4 (aq) → 2 Ho3+ (aq) + 3 (aq) + 3 H2 (g)

Oxidation states
As with many lanthanides, holmium is usually found in the +3 oxidation state, forming compounds such as holmium(III) fluoride (HoF3) and holmium(III) chloride (HoCl3). Holmium in solution is in the form of Ho3+ surrounded by nine molecules of water. Holmium dissolves in acids. However, holmium is also found to exist in +2, +1 and 0 oxidation states.

Isotopes
The isotopes of holmium range from 140Ho to 175Ho. The primary decay mode before the most abundant stable isotope, 165Ho, is positron emission, and the primary mode after is beta minus decay. The primary decay products before 165Ho are terbium and dysprosium isotopes, and the primary products after are erbium isotopes.

Natural holmium consists of one primordial isotope, holmium-165; it is the only isotope of holmium that is thought to be stable, although it is predicted to undergo alpha decay to terbium-161 with a very long half-life. Of the 35 synthetic radioactive isotopes that are known, the most stable one is holmium-163 (163Ho), with a half-life of 4570 years. All other radioisotopes have ground-state half-lives not greater than 1.117 days, with the longest, holmium-166 (166Ho) having a half-life of 26.83 hours, and most have half-lives under 3 hours.

166m1Ho has a half-life of around 1200 years. The high excitation energy, resulting in a particularly rich spectrum of decay gamma rays produced when the metastable state de-excites, makes this isotope useful as a means for calibrating gamma ray spectrometers.

Oxides and chalcogenides

Holmium(III) oxide is the only oxide of holmium. It changes its color depending on the lighting conditions. In daylight, it has a yellowish color. Under trichromatic light, it appears orange red, almost indistinguishable from the appearance of erbium oxide under the same lighting conditions. The color change is related to the sharp emission lines of trivalent holmium ions acting as red phosphors. Holmium(III) oxide appears pink under a cold-cathode fluorescent lamp.

Other chalcogenides are known for holmium. Holmium(III) sulfide has orange-yellow crystals in the monoclinic crystal system, with the space group P21/m (No. 11). Under high pressure, holmium(III) sulfide can form in the cubic and orthorhombic crystal systems. It can be obtained by the reaction of holmium(III) oxide and hydrogen sulfide at 1598 K. Holmium(III) selenide is also known. It is antiferromagnetic below 6 K.

Halides
All four trihalides of holmium are known. Holmium(III) fluoride is a yellowish powder that can be produced by reacting holmium(III) oxide and ammonium fluoride, then crystallising it from the ammonium salt formed in solution. Holmium(III) chloride can be prepared in a similar way, with ammonium chloride instead of ammonium fluoride. It has the YCl3 layer structure in the solid state. These compounds, as well as holmium(III) bromide and holmium(III) iodide, can be obtained by the direct reaction of the elements:

 * 2 Ho + 3 X2 → 2 HoX3

In addition, holmium(III) iodide can be obtained by the direct reaction of holmium and mercury(II) iodide, then removing the mercury by distillation.

Organoholmium compounds
Organoholmium compounds are very similar to those of the other lanthanides, as they all share an inability to undergo π backbonding. They are thus mostly restricted to the mostly ionic cyclopentadienides (isostructural with those of lanthanum) and the σ-bonded simple alkyls and aryls, some of which may be polymeric.

History
Holmium (Holmia, Latin name for Stockholm) was discovered by the Swiss chemists Jacques-Louis Soret and Marc Delafontaine in 1878 who noticed the aberrant spectrographic emission spectrum of the then-unknown element (they called it "Element X").

The Swedish chemist Per Teodor Cleve also independently discovered the element while he was working on erbia earth (erbium oxide). He was the first to isolate the new element. Using the method developed by the Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander, Cleve first removed all of the known contaminants from erbia. The result of that effort was two new materials, one brown and one green. He named the brown substance holmia (after the Latin name for Cleve's home town, Stockholm) and the green one thulia. Holmia was later found to be the holmium oxide, and thulia was thulium oxide.

In the English physicist Henry Moseley's classic paper on atomic numbers, holmium was assigned the value 66. The holmium preparation he had been given to investigate had been impure, dominated by neighboring (at the time undiscovered) dysprosium. He would have seen x-ray emission lines for both elements, but assumed that the dominant ones belonged to holmium, instead of the dysprosium impurity.

Occurrence and production
Like all the other rare-earth elements, holmium is not naturally found as a free element. It occurs combined with other elements in gadolinite, monazite and other rare-earth minerals. No holmium-dominant mineral has yet been found. The main mining areas are China, United States, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka, and Australia with reserves of holmium estimated as 400,000 tonnes. The annual production of holmium metal is of about 10 tonnes per year.

Holmium makes up 1.3 parts per million of the Earth's crust by mass. Holmium makes up 1 part per million of the soils, 400 parts per quadrillion of seawater, and almost none of Earth's atmosphere, which is very rare for a lanthanide. It makes up 500 parts per trillion of the universe by mass.

Holmium is commercially extracted by ion exchange from monazite sand (0.05% holmium), but is still difficult to separate from other rare earths. The element has been isolated through the reduction of its anhydrous chloride or fluoride with metallic calcium. Its estimated abundance in the Earth's crust is 1.3 mg/kg. Holmium obeys the Oddo–Harkins rule: as an odd-numbered element, it is less abundant than both dysprosium and erbium. However, it is the most abundant of the odd-numbered heavy lanthanides. Of the lanthanides, only promethium, thulium, lutetium and terbium are less abundant on Earth. The principal current source are some of the ion-adsorption clays of southern China. Some of these have a rare-earth composition similar to that found in xenotime or gadolinite. Yttrium makes up about two-thirds of the total by mass; holmium is around 1.5%. Holmium is relatively inexpensive for a rare-earth metal with the price about 1000 USD/kg.

Applications
Glass containing holmium oxide and holmium oxide solutions (usually in perchloric acid) have sharp optical absorption peaks in the spectral range 200 to 900 nm. They are therefore used as a calibration standard for optical spectrophotometers. The radioactive but long-lived 166m1Ho is used in calibration of gamma-ray spectrometers.

Holmium is used to create the strongest artificially generated magnetic fields, when placed within high-strength magnets as a magnetic pole piece (also called a magnetic flux concentrator). Holmium is also used in the manufacture of some permanent magnets.

Holmium-doped yttrium iron garnet (YIG) and yttrium lithium fluoride have applications in solid-state lasers, and Ho-YIG has applications in optical isolators and in microwave equipment (e.g., YIG spheres). Holmium lasers emit at 2.1 micrometres. They are used in medical, dental, and fiber-optical applications. It is also being considered for usage in the enucleation of the prostate.

Since holmium can absorb nuclear fission-bred neutrons, it is used as a burnable poison to regulate nuclear reactors. It is used as a colorant for cubic zirconia, providing pink coloring, and for glass, providing yellow-orange coloring. In March 2017, IBM announced that they had developed a technique to store one bit of data on a single holmium atom set on a bed of magnesium oxide. With sufficient quantum and classical control techniques, holmium may be a good candidate to make quantum computers.

Biological role and precautions
Holmium plays no biological role in humans, but its salts are able to stimulate metabolism. Humans typically consume about a milligram of holmium a year. Plants do not readily take up holmium from the soil. Some vegetables have had their holmium content measured, and it amounted to 100 parts per trillion. Holmium and its soluble salts are slightly toxic if ingested, but insoluble holmium salts are nontoxic. Metallic holmium in dust form presents a fire and explosion hazard. Large amounts of holmium salts can cause severe damage if inhaled, consumed orally, or injected. The biological effects of holmium over a long period of time are not known. Holmium has a low level of acute toxicity.

title: Holmium


text:
Hafnium

Hafnium is a chemical element; it has symbol Hf and atomic number 72. A lustrous, silvery gray, tetravalent transition metal, hafnium chemically resembles zirconium and is found in many zirconium minerals. Its existence was predicted by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, though it was not identified until 1922, by Dirk Coster and George de Hevesy, making it one of the last two stable elements to be discovered. (The element rhenium was found in 1908 by Masataka Ogawa, though its atomic number was misidentified at the time, and it was not generally recognised by the scientific community until its rediscovery by Walter Noddack, Ida Noddack, and Otto Berg in 1925. This makes it somewhat difficult to say if hafnium or rhenium was discovered last.) Hafnium is named after Hafnia, the Latin name for Copenhagen, where it was discovered.

Hafnium is used in filaments and electrodes. Some semiconductor fabrication processes use its oxide for integrated circuits at 45 nanometers and smaller feature lengths. Some superalloys used for special applications contain hafnium in combination with niobium, titanium, or tungsten.

Hafnium's large neutron capture cross section makes it a good material for neutron absorption in control rods in nuclear power plants, but at the same time requires that it be removed from the neutron-transparent corrosion-resistant zirconium alloys used in nuclear reactors.

Physical characteristics
Hafnium is a shiny, silvery, ductile metal that is corrosion-resistant and chemically similar to zirconium in that they have the same number of valence electrons and are in the same group. Also, their relativistic effects are similar: The expected expansion of atomic radii from period 5 to 6 is almost exactly canceled out by the lanthanide contraction. Hafnium changes from its alpha form, a hexagonal close-packed lattice, to its beta form, a body-centered cubic lattice, at 2388 K. The physical properties of hafnium metal samples are markedly affected by zirconium impurities, especially the nuclear properties, as these two elements are among the most difficult to separate because of their chemical similarity.

A notable physical difference between these metals is their density, with zirconium having about one-half the density of hafnium. The most notable nuclear properties of hafnium are its high thermal neutron capture cross section and that the nuclei of several different hafnium isotopes readily absorb two or more neutrons apiece. In contrast with this, zirconium is practically transparent to thermal neutrons, and it is commonly used for the metal components of nuclear reactors—especially the cladding of their nuclear fuel rods.

Chemical characteristics
Hafnium reacts in air to form a protective film that inhibits further corrosion. Despite this, the metal is attacked by hydrofluoric acid and concentrated sulfuric acid, and can be oxidized with halogens or burnt in air. Like its sister metal zirconium, finely divided hafnium can ignite spontaneously in air. The metal is resistant to concentrated alkalis.

As a consequence of lanthanide contraction, the chemistry of hafnium and zirconium is so similar that the two cannot be separated based on differing chemical reactions. The melting and boiling points of the compounds and the solubility in solvents are the major differences in the chemistry of these twin elements.

Isotopes
At least 40 isotopes of hafnium have been observed, ranging in mass number from 153 to 192. The five stable isotopes have mass numbers ranging from 176 to 180 inclusive. The radioactive isotopes' half-lives range from 400 ms for 153Hf to $7$ years for the most stable one, the primordial 174Hf.

The extinct radionuclide 182Hf has a half-life of $8.9 million years$, and is an important tracker isotope for the formation of planetary cores. The nuclear isomer 178m2Hf was at the center of a controversy for several years regarding its potential use as a weapon.

Occurrence

Hafnium is estimated to make up about between 3.0 and 4.8 ppm of the Earth's upper crust by mass. It does not exist as a free element on Earth, but is found combined in solid solution with zirconium in natural zirconium compounds such as zircon, ZrSiO4, which usually has about 1–4% of the Zr replaced by Hf. Rarely, the Hf/Zr ratio increases during crystallization to give the isostructural mineral hafnon (Hf,Zr)SiO4, with atomic Hf > Zr. An obsolete name for a variety of zircon containing unusually high Hf content is alvite.

A major source of zircon (and hence hafnium) ores is heavy mineral sands ore deposits, pegmatites, particularly in Brazil and Malawi, and carbonatite intrusions, particularly the Crown Polymetallic Deposit at Mount Weld, Western Australia. A potential source of hafnium is trachyte tuffs containing rare zircon-hafnium silicates eudialyte or armstrongite, at Dubbo in New South Wales, Australia.

Production

The heavy mineral sands ore deposits of the titanium ores ilmenite and rutile yield most of the mined zirconium, and therefore also most of the hafnium.

Zirconium is a good nuclear fuel-rod cladding metal, with the desirable properties of a very low neutron capture cross section and good chemical stability at high temperatures. However, because of hafnium's neutron-absorbing properties, hafnium impurities in zirconium would cause it to be far less useful for nuclear reactor applications. Thus, a nearly complete separation of zirconium and hafnium is necessary for their use in nuclear power. The production of hafnium-free zirconium is the main source of hafnium.

The chemical properties of hafnium and zirconium are nearly identical, which makes the two difficult to separate. The methods first used—fractional crystallization of ammonium fluoride salts or the fractional distillation of the chloride —have not proven suitable for an industrial-scale production. After zirconium was chosen as a material for nuclear reactor programs in the 1940s, a separation method had to be developed. Liquid–liquid extraction processes with a wide variety of solvents were developed and are still used for producing hafnium. About half of all hafnium metal manufactured is produced as a by-product of zirconium refinement. The end product of the separation is hafnium(IV) chloride. The purified hafnium(IV) chloride is converted to the metal by reduction with magnesium or sodium, as in the Kroll process.

Further purification is effected by a chemical transport reaction developed by Arkel and de Boer: In a closed vessel, hafnium reacts with iodine at temperatures of 500 °C, forming hafnium(IV) iodide; at a tungsten filament of 1700 °C the reverse reaction happens preferentially, and the chemically bound iodine and hafnium dissociate into the native elements. The hafnium forms a solid coating at the tungsten filament, and the iodine can react with additional hafnium, resulting in a steady iodine turnover and ensuring the chemical equilibrium remains in favor of hafnium production.

Chemical compounds
Due to the lanthanide contraction, the ionic radius of hafnium(IV) (0.78 ångström) is almost the same as that of  zirconium(IV) (0.79 angstroms). Consequently, compounds of hafnium(IV) and zirconium(IV) have very similar chemical and physical properties. Hafnium and zirconium tend to occur together in nature and the similarity of their ionic radii makes their chemical separation rather difficult. Hafnium tends to form inorganic compounds in the oxidation state of +4. Halogens react with it to form hafnium tetrahalides. At higher temperatures, hafnium reacts with oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, boron, sulfur, and silicon. Some hafnium compounds in lower oxidation states are known.

Hafnium(IV) chloride and hafnium(IV) iodide have some applications in the production and purification of hafnium metal. They are volatile solids with polymeric structures. These tetrachlorides are precursors to various organohafnium compounds such as hafnocene dichloride and tetrabenzylhafnium.

The white hafnium oxide (HfO2), with a melting point of 2,812 °C and a boiling point of roughly 5,100 °C, is very similar to zirconia, but slightly more basic. Hafnium carbide is the most refractory binary compound known, with a melting point over 3,890 °C, and hafnium nitride is the most refractory of all known metal nitrides, with a melting point of 3,310 °C. This has led to proposals that hafnium or its carbides might be useful as construction materials that are subjected to very high temperatures. The mixed carbide tantalum hafnium carbide possesses the highest melting point of any currently known compound, 4263 K. Recent supercomputer simulations suggest a hafnium alloy with a melting point of 4,400 K.

History
In his report on The Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements, in 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev had implicitly predicted the existence of a heavier analog of titanium and zirconium. At the time of his formulation in 1871, Mendeleev believed that the elements were ordered by their atomic masses and placed lanthanum (element 57) in the spot below zirconium. The exact placement of the elements and the location of missing elements was done by determining the specific weight of the elements and comparing the chemical and physical properties.

The X-ray spectroscopy done by Henry Moseley in 1914 showed a direct dependency between spectral line and effective nuclear charge. This led to the nuclear charge, or atomic number of an element, being used to ascertain its place within the periodic table. With this method, Moseley determined the number of lanthanides and showed the gaps in the atomic number sequence at numbers 43, 61, 72, and 75.

The discovery of the gaps led to an extensive search for the missing elements. In 1914, several people claimed the discovery after Henry Moseley predicted the gap in the periodic table for the then-undiscovered element 72. Georges Urbain asserted that he found element 72 in the rare earth elements in 1907 and published his results on celtium in 1911. Neither the spectra nor the chemical behavior he claimed matched with the element found later, and therefore his claim was turned down after a long-standing controversy. The controversy was partly because the chemists favored the chemical techniques which led to the discovery of celtium, while the physicists relied on the use of the new X-ray spectroscopy method that proved that the substances discovered by Urbain did not contain element 72. In 1921, Charles R. Bury suggested that element 72 should resemble zirconium and therefore was not part of the rare earth elements group. By early 1923, Niels Bohr and others agreed with Bury. These suggestions were based on Bohr's theories of the atom which were identical to chemist Charles Bury, the X-ray spectroscopy of Moseley, and the chemical arguments of Friedrich Paneth.

Encouraged by these suggestions and by the reappearance in 1922 of Urbain's claims that element 72 was a rare earth element discovered in 1911, Dirk Coster and Georg von Hevesy were motivated to search for the new element in zirconium ores. Hafnium was discovered by the two in 1923 in Copenhagen, Denmark, validating the original 1869 prediction of Mendeleev. It was ultimately found in zircon in Norway through X-ray spectroscopy analysis. The place where the discovery took place led to the element being named for the Latin name for "Copenhagen", Hafnia, the home town of Niels Bohr. Today, the Faculty of Science of the University of Copenhagen uses in its seal a stylized image of the hafnium atom.

Hafnium was separated from zirconium through repeated recrystallization of the double ammonium or potassium fluorides by Valdemar Thal Jantzen and von Hevesey. Anton Eduard van Arkel and Jan Hendrik de Boer were the first to prepare metallic hafnium by passing hafnium tetraiodide vapor over a heated tungsten filament in 1924. This process for differential purification of zirconium and hafnium is still in use today.

In 1923, six predicted elements were still missing from the periodic table: 43 (technetium), 61 (promethium), 85 (astatine), and 87 (francium) are radioactive elements and are only present in trace amounts in the environment, thus making elements 75 (rhenium) and 72 (hafnium) the last two unknown non-radioactive elements.

Applications
Most of the hafnium produced is used in the manufacture of control rods for nuclear reactors.

Several details contribute to the fact that there are only a few technical uses for hafnium: First, the close similarity between hafnium and zirconium makes it possible to use the more abundant zirconium for most applications; second, hafnium was first available as pure metal after the use in the nuclear industry for hafnium-free zirconium in the late 1950s. Furthermore, the low abundance and difficult separation techniques necessary make it a scarce commodity. When the demand for hafnium-free zirconium dropped following the Fukushima disaster, the price of hafnium increased sharply from around $500–600/kg in 2014 to around $1000/kg in 2015.

Nuclear reactors
The nuclei of several hafnium isotopes can each absorb multiple neutrons. This makes hafnium a good material for nuclear reactors' control rods. Its neutron capture cross section (Capture Resonance Integral Io ≈ 2000 barns) is about 600 times that of zirconium (other elements that are good neutron-absorbers for control rods are cadmium and boron). Excellent mechanical properties and exceptional corrosion-resistance properties allow its use in the harsh environment of pressurized water reactors. The German research reactor FRM II uses hafnium as a neutron absorber. It is also common in military reactors, particularly in US naval submarine reactors, to slow reactor rates that are too high. It is seldom found in civilian reactors, the first core of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station (a conversion of a naval reactor) being a notable exception.

Alloys
Hafnium is used in alloys with iron, titanium, niobium, tantalum, and other metals. An alloy used for liquid-rocket thruster nozzles, for example the main engine of the Apollo Lunar Modules, is C103 which consists of 89% niobium, 10% hafnium and 1% titanium.

Small additions of hafnium increase the adherence of protective oxide scales on nickel-based alloys. It thereby improves the corrosion resistance, especially under cyclic temperature conditions that tend to break oxide scales, by inducing thermal stresses between the bulk material and the oxide layer.

Microprocessors
Hafnium-based compounds are employed in gates of transistors as insulators in the 45 nm (and below) generation of integrated circuits from Intel, IBM and others. Hafnium oxide-based compounds are practical high-k dielectrics, allowing reduction of the gate leakage current which improves performance at such scales.

Isotope geochemistry
Isotopes of hafnium and lutetium (along with ytterbium) are also used in isotope geochemistry and geochronological applications, in lutetium-hafnium dating. It is often used as a tracer of isotopic evolution of Earth's mantle through time. This is because 176Lu decays to 176Hf with a half-life of approximately 37 billion years.

In most geologic materials, zircon is the dominant host of hafnium (>10,000 ppm) and is often the focus of hafnium studies in geology. Hafnium is readily substituted into the zircon crystal lattice, and is therefore very resistant to hafnium mobility and contamination. Zircon also has an extremely low Lu/Hf ratio, making any correction for initial lutetium minimal. Although the Lu/Hf system can be used to calculate a "model age", i.e. the time at which it was derived from a given isotopic reservoir such as the depleted mantle, these "ages" do not carry the same geologic significance as do other geochronological techniques as the results often yield isotopic mixtures and thus provide an average age of the material from which it was derived.

Garnet is another mineral that contains appreciable amounts of hafnium to act as a geochronometer. The high and variable Lu/Hf ratios found in garnet make it useful for dating metamorphic events.

Other uses
Due to its heat resistance and its affinity to oxygen and nitrogen, hafnium is a good scavenger for oxygen and nitrogen in gas-filled and incandescent lamps. Hafnium is also used as the electrode in plasma cutting because of its ability to shed electrons into the air.

The high energy content of 178m2Hf was the concern of a DARPA-funded program in the US. This program eventually concluded that using the above-mentioned 178m2Hf nuclear isomer of hafnium to construct high-yield weapons with X-ray triggering mechanisms—an application of induced gamma emission—was infeasible because of its expense. See hafnium controversy.

Hafnium metallocene compounds can be prepared from hafnium tetrachloride and various cyclopentadiene-type ligand species. Perhaps the simplest hafnium metallocene is hafnocene dichloride. Hafnium metallocenes are part of a large collection of Group 4 transition metal metallocene catalysts that are used worldwide in the production of polyolefin resins like polyethylene and polypropylene.

A pyridyl-amidohafnium catalyst can be used for the controlled iso-selective polymerization of propylene which can then be combined with polyethylene to make a much tougher recycled plastic.

Hafnium diselenide is studied in spintronics thanks to its charge density wave and superconductivity.

Precautions
Care needs to be taken when machining hafnium because it is pyrophoric—fine particles can spontaneously combust when exposed to air. Compounds that contain this metal are rarely encountered by most people. The pure metal is not considered toxic, but hafnium compounds should be handled as if they were toxic because the ionic forms of metals are normally at greatest risk for toxicity, and limited animal testing has been done for hafnium compounds.

People can be exposed to hafnium in the workplace by breathing, swallowing, skin, and eye contact. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the legal limit (permissible exposure limit) for exposure to hafnium and hafnium compounds in the workplace as TWA 0.5 mg/m3 over an 8-hour workday. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set the same recommended exposure limit (REL). At levels of 50 mg/m3, hafnium is immediately dangerous to life and health.

title: Hafnium