Ausenium (atomic symbol Ao) was the name assigned to the element with atomic number 93, now known as neptunium. It was named after a Greek name of Italy, Ausonia.^[1]

The same team assigned the name hesperium to element 94, after Hesperia, a poetic name of Italy.^[2] (Element 94 was later named plutonium).

The discovery of the element, now discredited, was made by Enrico Fermi and a team of scientists at the University of Rome in 1934. In the same year Ida Noddack had already presented alternative explanations for the experimental results of Fermi.^[3] Following the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938, it was realized that Fermi's discovery was actually a mixture of barium, krypton, and other elements. The actual element was discovered several years later, and assigned the name neptunium.^[2]

Fascist authorities wanted one of the elements to be named littorio after the Roman lictores who carried the fasces, a symbol appropriated by Fascism.^[2]

References

• Element name etymologies. Retrieved February 23, 2010.
• Nobel Prize Presentation Speech given by Professor H. Pleijel, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics on December 10, 1938
• Enrico Fermi, Artificial radioactivity produced by neutron bombardment, Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1938.