All Elements and the periodic table articles – Page 11

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On This Day - Nov 26 : Discovery of niobium

Now known as niobium (Nb), this metal element is very similar to tantalum (Ta), and was in fact confused with it during parts of the 19th century. This lead to it being renamed niobium after the daughter of Tantalus in Greek mythology.
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On This Day - Feb 25 : Ida Noddack was born

Noddack co-discovered rhenium (Re) while working with her future husband Walter Noddack. They named the element after the river Rhine. Rhenium is one of the rarest metals on earth and is used in filaments and for catalysts in the chemicals industry.
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On This Day – Sep 25 : Separation of iron

The method from this English chemist, which used water, ammonia and muriatic acid, was simpler than other popular methods of extracting manganese metal from its ore. Manganese is used in important alloys, and one of its oxides, permanganate, is used in analysis such as redox titrations.
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On This Day - Dec 25 : William Gregor was born

2012-09-27T13:12:00Z

He discovered the element titanium (Ti), which he originally named manaccanite after the Manaccan valley where he found it. A few years later, it was rediscovered by Martin Klaproth who thought it was a new element and gave it the current name of titanium.
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On This Day - Dec 23 : Axel Cronstedt was born

He discovered the element nickel (Ni) in 1751, describing the metal as “kupfernickel” – the Devil’s copper (Cu). He is one of the founders of modern mineralogy and developed a procedure involving the use of blowpipes for analysing the composition of minerals.
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On This Day - Dec 22 : Liquid oxygen was made

The experiment was notified to the Academy of Sciences in Paris in a telegram from Pictet in Geneva: “Oxygen liquefied to-day under 320 atmospheres and 140 degrees of cold by combined use of sulfurous and carbonic acid”.
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On This Day - Mar 21 : Plutonium was named

Plutonium (Pu) took its name from the dwarf planet Pluto. First discovered by Glenn Seaborg and colleagues as a product of nuclear fission, traces of plutonium were later found in a rock formation by Darleane Hoffmann.
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On This Day - Jun 21 : Boron was isolated

The French pair beat the English chemist Humphrey Davy to it by just nine days. Boron (B) is named after one of its compounds, borax, which had been used as a glazing agent for hundreds of years.
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On This Day - Nov 21 : Hieronymus Richter was born

He was the co-discoverer of indium (In), an element used to form transparent electrodes in liquid crystal displays in computers, televisions and touch screens.
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On This Day – Aug 20 : Plutonium iodate isolated

American nuclear chemists Burris Cunningham and Louis Werner isolated a microgram of plutonium(IV) iodate, the first visible quantity to the human eye. Today, plutonium is widely used in the production of nuclear energy.
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On This Day - Dec 20 : Jaroslav Heyrovskȳ was born

He was awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of polarography, an analytical tool that uses a dropping mercury (Hg) electrode to investigate the effects of varying currents and potentials of a compound.
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On This Day - Apr 19 : Glen Seaborg was born

Seaborg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 with Edwin McMillan for the discovery of many transuranium elements. The element seaborgium (Sg) is named in his honour.
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On This Day - Apr 18 : Paul de Boisbaudran born

His most significant work was in spectroscopy and its application to the rare earth metals. He analysed the spectra of 35 elements using a Bunsen burner or electric spark to induce luminescence and consequently discovered the lanthanides samarium (Sm), dysprosium (Dy) and europium (Eu).
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On This Day - Mar 17 : Carl Jacob Löwig was born

He discovered bromine (Br) while adding chlorine (Cl) and ether to spring water and found a red coloured substance. While Löwig investigated this substance, Antoine Balard published his independent discovery of bromine.
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On This Day - May 17 : Joseph Lockyer was born

While observing a spectrum of the sun during a solar eclipse in 1868, Lockyer noticed a prominent yellow line, which he identified as an unknown solar element. He named this helium (He) after the Greek word for sun.
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On This Day - May 16 : Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin was born

Vauquelin discovered the elements chromium (Cr) and beryllium (Be). Chromium is a hard, silvery metal used to make stainless steel. Beryllium is used in gears and cogs, particularly in aeroplanes.
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On This Day - Apr 15 : de Marignac died

He was one of the first to suggest the existence of isotopes. He also discovered the element ytterbium (Yb) and co-discovered gadolinium (Gd). Related resources: Gadolinium - Element information Gadolinium podcast Ytterbium - Element information Ytterbium podcast
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On This Day - May 15 : Pierre Curie was born

Pierre Curie co-discovered polonium (Po) and radium (Ra) with his wife Marie Curie. He was also a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism and radioactivity.
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On This Day – Jul 15 : Albert Ghiorso was born

He co-discovered 12 elements while working at the University of California, Berkeley: americium (Am), curium (Cm), berkelium (Bk), californium (Cf), einsteinium (Es), fermium (Fm), mendelevium (Md), nobelium (No), lawrencium (Lr), rutherfordium (Rf), dubnium (Db) and seaborgium (Sg).
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On This Day – Sep 15 : Neil Bartlett was born

He was the first person to produce a compound containing a noble gas. Until Bartlett created xenon (Xe) hexafluoroplatinate in 1962, most scientists believed that the noble gases were too unreactive to form compounds. The discovery opened up a whole new area of study in inorganic chemistry.