Nobelium Nobelium has the symbol No and is a radioactive metallic element with an atomic number of 102. Nobelium is in the actinide series being labeled as one of the transuranium elements. The element is named after Alfred Bernhard Nobel, the Swedish inventor and philanthropist. Nobelium can be found when produced artificially in a laboratory. Discovery of the element was first claimed in 1957 by scientific groups in the United States, Great Britain, and Sweden, but the first confirmed discovery of a nobelium isotope was by a team of scientists at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California and that took place in 1958. The isotope was created by bombarding cu