In 1991, Thomas Kyle (the supposed discoverer of this element) was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for physics, making him one of only three fictional people to have won the award.[1]
A spoof article was written by William DeBuvitz in 1988 and first appeared in print in the January 1989 issue of The Physics Teacher.[2] It spread rapidly among university campuses and research centers; many versions surfaced, often customized to the contributor's situation.
A similar joke concerns Administrontium which was referenced in print in 1993.[3]
Another variation on the same joke is Bureaucratium. A commonly heard description describes it as "having a negative half-life". In other words, the more time passes, the more massive "Bureaucratium" becomes; it only grows larger and more sluggish. This refers to the bureaucratic system, which is generally perceived as a system in which bureaucratic procedures accumulate, and whatever needs to get done takes increasingly longer to get done as soon as it touches the bureaucracy.
^Gilchrist, Alice (October 4, 1991). "Ig Nobel Prizes Debut". The Tech. Vol. 111, no. 40. Archived from the original on December 30, 2008. Retrieved February 1, 2007.
