May I be the 94th to suggest
Bowieum and Ziggium
Campaigning Terry Pratchett aficionados have followed the lead of Lemmy fans in demanding that one of the four new elements recently admitted to the periodic table be named in honour of their hero. Last week, we reported that an online petition is calling for either element 113, 115, 117 or 118 to be dubbed "Lemmium". Cue …
Did pTerry ask for an element to be named in his honour? No he didn't, same with Lemmy (and I guess now Bowie). None of them have asked for an element to be named after them, this is something the fans of each of them has asked in order that they'll be remembered going forward. It's probably unlikely that any of them will be picked (after all names are chosen by the discovering scientists, but their views on the mythological status of the Discworld or Lemmy's contributions to Heavy Metals is unknown at this time).
Personally I think each has it's merits (including the probably soon to be requested Bowium). As stated elsewhere Lemmy already has a star named after him and lets face it he was Heavy Metal (not to forget being a former member of the original space cadets, Hawkwind). pTerry created a rich mythos in his Discworld series, which at times needed several degrees in literature and the sciences in order to fully get the most out of. And for me Bowie was the original Starman, and you can't argue that he gave a certain Canadian astronaut one of the coolest sendoffs from the ISS possible with Space Oddity played in outer space.
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The rules had better not say that. Walking down the group we have Fluorine, Chlorine, Bromine, Iodine, Astatine and <this one>. The "ium" ending is traditional for metals and most of the trans-uranic elements to date have been metals, but 117 is a halogen and any self-respecting chemist would insist on a name ending in -ine.
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The Erdős-Bacon-Sabbath project attempts to find people who have the smallest number of links to a paper published by mathematician Paul Erdős, a film with Kevin Bacon, and a performance with Black Sabbath
http://erdosbaconsabbath.com/
PTerry has a score of 4+2+3, Brian May's is 5+3+1. Richard Feynman's is 3+3+4.
More at http://timeblimp.com/?page_id=195
Alexander Borodin is most famous today as a composer (you will recognise the tune of his Polovtsian Dances from 'Prince Igor'), but at his day job he was a world-class research chemist - he co-discovered the Aldol Addition, which features in every organic chemistry textbook. I can't think of anyone else who has significantly added to 'the canon' of both science and music, though there are plenty of scientists who are also skilled musicians, and professional musicians with a science or maths background.
The eight-ish connection is a fair point, but the petitioners did put some thought into it; from the article:
> According to Disc mythology, octarine is visible only to wizards and cats, and is generally described as a sort of greenish-yellow purple colour, which seems perfect for what will probably be the final halogen in the periodic table
So we have the right sort of colour and the name fits in well: flourine, chlorine, iodine ... octarine
Physicist Len Fisher pays tribute to Pratchett's scientific observations.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/2016-01-02/7051062 link to webpage where MP3 can be downloaded from.
Example:
It’s very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is.'
"It’s very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is.'"
Always one of my favourites, just behind....
"It is hard to convey five-dimensional ideas in a language evolved to scream defiance at the monkeys in the next tree”
― Terry Pratchett, Darwin's Watch: The Science of Discworld III: A Novel
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