[1] Ninov also claimed the creation of elements 116 and 118 (now livermorium and oganesson);[2][3] however, an investigation conducted by the University of California, Berkeley concluded that he had falsified the evidence.
[6] Shortly after the move, Victor's father went missing; he was found dead six months later in the Bulgarian foothills due to causes unknown.
[6][1] Though an investigation later determined that these discoveries of element 110 and 112 included fabricated samples created by Ninov, additional evidence of the experiment was confirmed to be untampered with, rendering his co-discovery legitimate.
[5] He was hired at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in 1996 as a world class expert for particle accelerator debris sensors, and analysis programs.
[6] While working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) Victor Ninov and his team pursued a hypothesis by Robert Smolańczuk, then a visiting fellow from Poland on a Fulbright scholarship,[citation needed] that element 118 could be formed at relatively low energies by smashing 86Kr and 208Pb isotopes together.
[citation needed] Ninov initially doubted the hypothesis he was pursuing; he is quoted as saying, "We didn't know how many orders of magnitude he [Smolańczuk] was wrong".
[6] As in some earlier research projects, Ninov held sole control of the data analysis program (LBNL's was called GOOSY), and he was the only one on the team who knew how to use it.
[1] The superheavy elements 116 and 118 were eventually discovered and verified in the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia from 2000–2002.
[6] He was so respected that Albert Ghiorso, a physicist who had part in the discovery of 12 elements and a close collaborator of Glenn Seaborg, once called Ninov "a younger version of himself".