The Friday Question: A prequel

I think I missed out last week’s question, my apologies. So here’s a simple teaser instead, while I work on the question for tomorrow.

Name the odd one out as well as what they have in common.

Niels Bohr. Pierre and Marie Curie. Albert Einstein. Enrico Fermi. Alfred Nobel. Ernest Rutherford.

Getting the odd one out correctly means nothing. You must answer both parts.

19 thoughts on “The Friday Question: A prequel”

  1. Here’s my guess: Alfred Nobel. He established the Nobel Prizes; everyone else received them: Albert Einstein received his Nobel Prize in 1922, Ernest Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Enrico Fermi in 1938, Niels Bohr in 1922 and Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903.

  2. ok, got it:
    bohrium– Niels Bohr
    curium– Pierre and Marie Curie
    einsteinium– Albert Einstein
    fermium– Enrico Fermi
    nobelium– Alfred Nobel
    rutherfordium (Rf, 104) – Ernest Rutherford

  3. [Heavy Wikipedia research to follow]

    I figured almost immediately that they all have elements of the periodic table named after them, so that was a good candidate (apart from the obvious Nobel prize connection) for the common factor. The elements named after these stalwarts are:

    Curium 96
    Einsteinium 99
    Fermium 100
    Nobelium 102
    Rutherfordium 104
    Bohrium 107

    Initially I thought the odd one out is Rutherford, whose eponymous element was discovered almost simultaneously in the USA and the USSR. The Russians named it Kurchatovium, and it took a committee of the IUPAC to resolve the situation. All the other elements were “unanimous” choices. This was from what I remembered of my high-school Chemistry. But Wikipedia says there was a naming controversy about 107 as well, which was also resolved by an IUPAC committee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Element_naming_controversy), so I looked deeper.

    Eventually I have hit upon the real odd-one-out – the Curies. The element named after them, Curium, is the only one of the set that naturally occurs and is not a synthetic (ie, artificially created) element. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_element

  4. No one has quite got what I am looking for so far. You have all identified that the list of people have all had elements named after them. Nobel is a possible odd man out, given the others all won Nobel Prizes, but I could also argue that all are associated with Nobel Prizes. Similarly, while trace curium has been located in “natural” state, the element is normally synthesised, as are all the others.

    Some have suggested banknotes, but neither Fermi nor Nobel have appeared on banknotes. All have appeared on stamps and on coins.

    I am waiting for the distinctively different answer I set the question for. And it has not surfaced yet.

  5. Their investions lead to invetion of powerful explosives (nuclear bomb and dynamite) ,All but Alfred nobel was not involved in journey to nuclear bomb.
    Some hint pls, Is answer realted to science or I need to expenad my search area?

  6. All of them except Alfred Nobel have won the Nobel prize and the common aspect of course is the elements named after each one of them.

    This was a tough one crack!

  7. Marie Curie is the only woman, but I suppose that’s too obvious. On the other hand, finding the odd one out was expected to be the easy part. So maybe it’s not so obvious to everybody… in which case, how geeky can you get?

  8. Well, I have found another connection between all of them (with the exception of Marie Curie) – which I looked at in response to JP’s last sentence.

  9. haha – it ended up that my guess about the connection was correct – which makes JP’s hint of “surface” (concious or unconcious?) very impressive.

Let me know what you think

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