Sanskrit in scientific terminology

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> undiscovered elements with certain properties that he specified.  He 
> named his predicted elements by prefixing the Sanskrit numerals eka-, 
> dvi-, tri-, shchatur- [sic] to the names of the corresponding known 
> elements.  (Unfortunately, the predicted elements were given new 
> nationalistic names when they were later discovered, e.g. Mendeleev's 
> "eka-aluminium" became gallium, "eka-boron" became scandium, 
> "eka-silicon" became germanium, "dvi-tellurium" became polonium, and 
> "tri-manganese" became rhenium.)

This is interesting. I knew about eka-boron but not about dvi-tellurium
and tri-manganese. Still, I think it is a good thing that new names were
given to the elements after they were discovered. Chemistry would have
been quite cumbersome otherwise. Also note that the periodic table itself
has undergone many changes in its principle (atomic number instead of 
atomic weight) and its structure (separation of A and B sub-groups,
introduction of a separate positions for lanthanide and actinide series,
etc.) since Mendeleev's original proposition. So there was no overriding
reason to maintain his names for the as yet undiscovered elements. 

> 
> Why did Mendeleev use Sanskrit terminology here rather than Greek or
> Latin as is normal?  Could it be that he knew about the Sivasutras?
> If he did, he must have seen that they are really a periodic system of
> the Sanskrit sounds, amazingly similar to his own periodic system of
> chemical elements even in their arrangement. So could the Sanskrit
> names have been meant as homage to Panini?
> 

How about the simpler possibility that Mendeleev was proposing something
new and therefore wanted to avoid confusion? The Greek and Latin suffixes
had already come to have other meanings in chemistry. For example,
di-nitrogen is sometimes used to mean a nitrogen molecule that has two
nitrogen atoms. Similarly with di-oxygen. These terms are falling out of
usage, but they were in currency till fairly recently. So, when a chemist
hears a word with a prefix like di-, he does not think of a completely
different element, which just happens to have a related position in the
periodic table. Rather he would think of a different form of the same
element. 

The prefixes mono-, di- and tri- are still used in compound names,
although not very often in names of elements. As such, the use of such
prefixes would have been confusing. "Di-tellurium" could have well meant
some bizarre creature like a molecule composed of two tellurium atoms.
"Dvi-tellurium" would have drawn attention to the fact that Mendeleev was
not talking of such a tellurium molecule. 

Interestingly, the term "Unnil" is used to denote the heaviest elements
which do not occur naturally, but are seen within extremely short
half-lives in some radioactive processes. Thus, "unnilpentium" is
an element with atomic number 105 (here "pentium" is not that computer
thingy :-)). Looks like Latin has won out once again. 

S. Vidyasankar