The element Nobelium (No), with atomic number 102, is named after:

Nobelium (symbol No, atomic number 102) is a synthetic, radioactive element. It belongs to the actinide series of the periodic table (elements 89 to 103). It is named in honour of Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), the Swedish chemist and engineer who invented dynamite in 1867 and whose will established the Nobel Prizes.

The discovery of nobelium has a complicated history. In 1957, a team at the Nobel Institute of Physics in Stockholm, Sweden, claimed to have made element 102 and proposed the name "nobelium". Their results could not be confirmed. Later, teams at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in the USA and at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia (then the USSR), produced and identified isotopes of element 102 in the late 1950s and 1960s. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) gave most credit to the Dubna team, but the name "nobelium" was retained because it was already widely used.

Nobelium does not occur naturally. It is produced in very tiny amounts by bombarding heavier elements, such as curium, with lighter nuclei like carbon in particle accelerators. Its isotopes have short half-lives, so it has no practical uses outside scientific research.

Many elements are named after famous scientists:

• Einsteinium (Es, 99): Albert Einstein; it was first found in the debris of the first hydrogen bomb test in 1952.
• Fermium (Fm, 100): Enrico Fermi.
• Mendelevium (Md, 101): Dmitri Mendeleev, who created the first widely accepted periodic table (1869).
• Lawrencium (Lr, 103): Ernest Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron.
• Rutherfordium (Rf, 104), Bohrium (Bh, 107), Meitnerium (Mt, 109), Roentgenium (Rg, 111), Copernicium (Cn, 112) and Curium (Cm, 96).
• Seaborgium (Sg, 106) was named after Glenn Seaborg while he was still alive.
• Other elements are named after places (such as Americium, Europium, Polonium and Tennessine) or mythology (such as Titanium and Promethium).

Why not the other options?

• ✗Niels Bohr is honoured by Bohrium (107).
• ✗Dmitri Mendeleev is honoured by Mendelevium (101).
• ✗Isaac Newton has no element named after him.