The word "mendelevium" is correct and usable in written English.
It is used in scientific contexts, specifically in chemistry, to refer to the element with atomic number 101.
Example: "Mendelevium is a synthetic element that was first produced in 1955."
Alternatives: "Element 101" or "Md".
The other new elements discovered by Seaborg were americium (95), curium (96), berkelium (97), californium (98), einsteinium (99), fermium (100), mendelevium (101), nobelium (102), and seaborgium (106).
In about a dozen repetitions of the experiment, the team of scientists produced 17 atoms of mendelevium, which were identified by the ion-exchange adsorption-elution method (mendelevium behaved like its rare-earth homologue thulium) and by the electron-capture decay of its daughter isotope fermium-256.
Fifteen other isotopes of mendelevium, all radioactive, have been discovered.
Einsteinium-255 and einsteinium-256 eject electrons to form isotopes of fermium (atomic number 100), and mendelevium (atomic number 101) isotopes have been produced by bombarding einsteinium-253 "targets" with alpha particles in cyclotrons or linear accelerators.
Studied by means of radioactive tracer techniques, mendelevium exhibits a predominant +3 oxidation state, as would be expected by its position in the actinoid series; a slightly stable +2 oxidation state is also known.
Here's our favourite chemistry professor, telling us about Ernest Lawrence and the times in which he lived: [Video link] I investigated the reason that the atomic symbols for this element and for mendelevium were changed by IUPAC -- the original symbols were perfectly fine in my opinion.
Among these exotics is mendelevium, after Dmitry I. Mendeleyev, the 19th-century Russian chemist who invented the periodic table, and nobelium, for the bestower of science's big prize.
Mendelevium (Md), synthetic chemical element of the actinoid series of the periodic table, atomic number 101.
