Periodic table

The scientist already had broken barriers when she joined an international mission to do something else unprecedented: Create Element 117.

“My hands were in the glove box handling that material,” said Phelps, who’s working to finish her PhD in nuclear engineering. It was declared a success in 2012, and four years later, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry – the world authority on chemistry – officially recognized Element 117 as part of the periodic table, [along with three](https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/08/health/periodic-table-new-elements-names) other new elements. Phelps’ “name was inadvertently omitted from a plaque dedicated to (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) staff credited with the discovery of tennessine, an error we quickly corrected,” the institution told CNN. And like other so-called “superheavy elements” that don’t exist in nature, it would have to be created in a lab. And she was acknowledged by Chapman, a science historian, and It’s the second-heaviest known element on Earth, and though its use is limited to research, scientists believe it is a critical stepping stone toward the creation of future superheavy elements. When I was in the Navy, I was the only Black girl in my division. [racial bias and sexism](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/11/nobel-winning-sexism-in-the-lab/gender-and-racial-bias-is-systemic-in-the-sciences) tried to get in her way, she said. “For the first 18 years of my career, I was the only Black woman in my field. [aboard the USS Ronald Reagan](https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-02/Clarice%20CV.pdf). Phelps later was selected into a magnet school, where she met two teachers who, she said, were “instrumental” in nurturing her passion for science. An “unlikely scientist,” Phelps had few scientific influences beyond a stack of home encyclopedias and “Beakman’s World” on TV, she’s said.