Greek historian Olympiodorus of Thebes roasted arsenic sulfide and obtained white arsenic during 5th century AD. Albertus Magnus is believed to have been the first to isolate the element from a compound in 1250, by heating soap together with arsenic trisulfide. In 1649, Johann Schröder published two ways of preparing arsenic.
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Selenium was first observed in about the year 1300 by the alchemist Arnold of Villanova. Selenium was discovered in 1817 by Jöns Jacob Berzelius and Johan Gottlieb Gahn who noted the similarity of the new element to the previously-known tellurium. In 1873, Willoughby Smith found that the electrical resistance of grey selenium was dependent on the ambient light.
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Carl Jacob Löwig discovered bromine in 1825, while still a chemistry student at Heidelberg University, Germany. Antoine Balard distilled the bromine from a solution of seaweed ash saturated with chlorine in 1824. He finally published his results in 1826, providing evidence that the substance he had discovered was a new element.
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Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay and his assistant English chemist Morris Travers discovered krypton in 1898 in London. They found krypton in the residue left from evaporating nearly all components of liquid air. William Ramsay was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovery of a series of noble gases, including krypton.
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German chemists Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff discovered rubidium in 1861 by the newly developed method of flame spectroscopy. The separation of the metal was tried by Bunsen, but he never got samples with more than 18% of Rubidium. The separation of the metal was only accomplished by George de Hevesy, through the hydrolysis of melted rubidium hydroxide.
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Strontium was recognized as a new element in 1790 when Adair Crawford and his colleague William Cruickshank analyzed a mineral sample from a lead mine near Strontian, Scotland. The element was eventually isolated by Sir Humphry Davy in 1808. The isolation was done by the electrolysis of a mixture containing strontium chloride and mercuric oxide.
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In 1787, Carl Axel Arrhenius found a new mineral near Ytterby in Sweden and named it ytterbite, after the village. Johan Gadolin discovered yttrium's oxide in Arrhenius' sample in 1789, and Anders Gustaf Ekeberg named the new oxide yttria. Elemental yttrium was first isolated in 1828 by Friedrich Wöhler.
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Zirconium was first recognized as an element by Martin Heinrich Klaproth in 1789, in Berlin, in a sample of zircon from Sri Lanka. Zirconium metal was first obtained in an impure form in 1824 by Jöns Jakob Berzelius by heating a mixture of potassium and potassium zirconium fluoride in an iron tube. Dutch scientists Anton Eduard van Arkel and Jan Hendrik de Boer discovered a method for producing high purity zirconium in 1925.
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Niobium was discovered by the English chemist Charles Hatchett in 1801 and named the new element columbium. In 1846, German chemist Henrich Rose independently discovered the element and named it niobium. The metal was first isolated by Swedish scientist Christian Wilhelm Blomstrand in 1864 who reduced the chloride by heating it in a hydrogen atmosphere.
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Molybdenite was often confused for graphite and it was thought to contain lead. In 1778 Swedish scientist Carl Wilhelm Scheele proved that molybdenite was not graphite nor did it contain lead. In 1781, Scheele's friend and countryman, Peter J. Hjelm isolated the metal by using carbon and linseed oil.
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Element 43 was predicted on the basis of the periodic table, and was erroneously reported as having been discovered in 1925, at which time it was named masurium. The element was actually discovered by Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segrè in 1937. It was also found in a sample of molybdenum sent by Ernest Lawrence that was bombarded by deuterons in the Berkeley cyclotron.
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Jędrzej Śniadecki isolated the element in 1807, but his work was not ratified. Jöns Berzelius and Gottfried Osann nearly discovered ruthenium in 1827. In 1844, Karl Ernst Claus confirmed that there was a new element and isolated ruthenium from the platinum residues of the rouble production while he was working in Kazan University, Kazan.
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Rhodium was discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston in London. He used crude platinum ore presumably obtained from South America. The introduction of the three way catalytic converter by Volvo in 1976 increased the demand for rhodium.
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Palladium was discovered in 1803, in London, by English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He examined the residues left from platinum after dissolving it in aqua regia, a concentrated solution of hydrochloric and nitric acids. He then isolated palladium in a series of chemical reactions.
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Silver has been used for thousands of years for ornaments and utensils, for trade, and as the basis for many monetary systems. Its value as a precious metal was long considered second only to gold. Slag dumps in Asia Minor and on islands in the Aegean Sea indicate that man learned to separate silver from lead as early as 3000 BC.
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Cadmium was discovered by German chemist Friedrich Stromeyer in 1817 as an impurity in zinc carbonate. Stromeyer noted that some impure samples of calamine (zinc carbonate) changed color when heated but pure calamine did not. Cadmium was independently discovered by German chemist Karl Hermann in 1818.
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Ferdinand Reich and Hieronymous Theodor Richter first identified indium in sphalerite by its bright indigo-blue spectroscopic emission line. As no element was known with a bright blue emission they concluded that a new element was present in the minerals. Richter went on to isolate the metal in 1864.
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Tin was first smelted in combination with copper around 3500 BC to produce bronze. The oldest artifacts date from around 2000 BC. Cassiterite, the tin oxide form of tin, was most likely the original source of tin in ancient times. British scientist Robert Boyle published a description of his experiments on the oxidation of tin in 1673.
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One of antimony's minerals, stibnite was recognized in predynastic Egypt as an eye cosmetic as early as about 3100 BC. The first European description of a procedure for isolating antimony is in the book De la pirotechnia of 1540 by Vannoccio Biringuccio. The first natural occurrence of pure antimony in the Earth's crust was described by the Swedish scientist and local mine district engineer Anton von Swab in 1783.
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Tellurium was discovered in Transylvania in 1782 by Franz-Joseph Müller von Reichenstein in a mineral containing tellurium and gold. In 1789, another Hungarian scientist, Pál Kitaibel, also discovered the element independently in an ore from Deutsch-Pilsen which had been regarded as argentiferous molybdenite. In 1798, it was named by Martin Heinrich Klaproth who earlier isolated it from the mineral calaverite.
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Iodine was discovered by French chemist Bernard Courtois in 1811. He treated the liquor obtained from the extraction of kelp, with sulphuric acid to produce a vapour with a violet colour. In 1812, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac demonstrated that iodine was an element and its chemical relationship to chlorine.
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Xenon was discovered in England by the Scottish chemist William Ramsay and English chemist Morris Travers in 1898. They found xenon in the residue left over from evaporating components of liquid air. Spectroscopic analysis showed the previously unseen beautiful blue lines that indicated the presence of a new element.
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Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff were the first to suggest finding caesium in 1860 by spectrum analysis. They discovered caesium by its two blue emission lines in a sample of Dürkheim mineral water. The pure metal was eventually isolated by the German chemist Carl Setterberg while working on his doctorate with Kekulé and Bunsen.
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Barium was identified as a new element in 1774 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Barium was first isolated by electrolysis of molten barium salts in 1808, by Sir Humphry Davy in England. Robert Bunsen and Augustus Matthiessen obtained pure barium by electrolysis of a molten mixture of barium chloride and ammonium chloride.
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Lanthanum was discovered in 1839 by Swedish chemist Carl Gustav Mosander. He partially decomposed a sample of cerium nitrate by heating and treating the resulting salt with dilute nitric acid. From the resulting solution, he obtained a pale brick colored oxide of the new rare earth. Lanthanum was isolated in relatively pure form in 1923.
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Jöns Jakob Berzelius and Wilhelm Hisinger discovered the element in ceria in 1803 in Sweden. Klaproth discovered it simultaneously and independently in some tantalum samples in Germany. Carl Gustaf Mosander, who worked closely with Berzelius, prepared metallic cerium in 1825.
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Praseodymium was first identified in 1885, in Vienna, by the Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach. It was discovered in didymium, a substance incorrectly said by Carl Gustav Mosander to be a new element in 1841. Pure metallic praseodymium was first produced in 1931.
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Neodymium was first identified in 1885, in Vienna, by the Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach. It was discovered in didymium, a substance incorrectly said by Carl Gustav Mosander to be a new element in 1841. Pure neodymium metal was isolated in 1925.
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The existence of an element between neodymium and samarium was first predicted by Czech chemist Bohuslav Brauner in 1902. Promethium was first produced and characterized at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1945 by Jacob A. Marinsky, Lawrence E. Glendenin and Charles D. Coryell. It was produced by the separation and analysis of the fission products of uranium fuel irradiated in a graphite reactor.
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In 1853, Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac discovered samarium when he found lines in mineral spectra. Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran isolated a samarium salt in Paris in 1879 from the mineral samarskite and identified a new element in it via sharp optical absorption lines. The pure element was produced only in 1901 by Eugène-Anatole Demarçay.
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Europium was first found by Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1890. In 1896, French chemist Eugène-Antole Demarçay identified spectroscopic lines in ‘samarium' caused by europium. He successfully isolated europium in 1901 using repeated crystallizations of samarium magnesium nitrate.
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Gadolinium was first detected spectroscopically in 1880 by the Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac who separated its oxide. He observed spectroscopic lines due to gadolinium in samples of gadolinite and in the separate mineral cerite. The metal was isolated by Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1886.
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Terbium was discovered in 1843 by Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander, who detected it as an impurity in yttria. Using ammonium hydroxide he precipitated fractions of different basicity from yttria. In these fractions he found that the fraction that was essentially colorless in solution, but gave a brown-tinged oxide was terbium.
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French chemist Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, while working with holmium oxide, separated dysprosium oxide from it in Paris in 1886. His procedure for isolating the dysprosium involved dissolving dysprosium oxide in acid, then adding ammonia to precipitate the hydroxide. It was not isolated in pure form until the development of ion exchange techniques in the 1950s.
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Holmium was discovered by Swiss chemists Marc Delafontaine and Jacques-Louis Soret in 1878. They noticed the aberrant spectrographic absorption bands of the then-unknown element. Later in 1878, Per Teodor Cleve independently discovered the element while he was working on erbia earth.
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Erbium was discovered in 1843 by Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander, who detected it as an impurity in yttria. Using ammonium hydroxide he precipitated fractions of different basicity from yttria. In these fractions he found that the fraction that contained the pink color was erbium.
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Thulium was discovered by Swedish chemist Per Teodor Cleve in 1879 by looking for impurities in the oxides of other rare earth elements. The first researcher to obtain nearly pure thulium was Charles James, a British expatriate working on a large scale at New Hampshire College in Durham. High-purity thulium oxide was first offered commercially in the late 1950s.
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Ytterbium was discovered by the Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac in the year 1878. In 1907, in Paris, George Urbain separated ytterbia into two constituents. Ytterbium metal was first made in 1937 by Klemm and Bonner by heating ytterbium chloride and potassium together. A relatively pure sample of the metal was obtained only in 1953.
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French chemist Georges Urbain successfully separated lutetium from ytterbia in 1907 in Paris. Austrian scientist Carl Auer von Welsbach and American chemist Charles James also succeeded in isolating lutetium independently in the same year. Pure lutetium metal was first produced in 1953.
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In 1911, Georges Urbain claimed to have found the element in rare-earth residues which was shown later to be a mixture of already discovered lanthanides. Dirk Coster and George de Hevesy found it by X-ray spectroscopic analysis in Norwegian zircon in 1922. Anton Eduard van Arkel and Jan Hendrik de Boer were the first to prepare metallic hafnium by passing hafnium tetra-iodide vapor over a heated tungsten filament in 1924.
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Tantalum was discovered in Sweden in 1802 by Anders Ekeberg in the minerals tantalite from Finland and yttrotantalite from Sweden. Unfortunately, William Hyde Wollaston claimed Ekeberg's new element was actually niobium, which had also been discovered in 1802. In 1846, German chemist Heinrich Rose finally proved beyond doubt that tantalum and niobium were different elements.
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Torbern Bergman obtained from scheelite an oxide of a new element in 1781. In 1783, José and Fausto Elhuyar found an acid made from wolframite that was identical to tungstic acid. Later that year, in Spain, the brothers succeeded in isolating tungsten by reduction of this acid with charcoal, and they are credited with the discovery of the element.
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In 1908, Japanese chemist Masataka Ogawa announced that he discovered the 43rd element. However, later analysis indicated the presence of rhenium (element 75), not element 43. In 1922, Walter Noddack, Ida Eva Tacke and Otto Berg announced its separation from gadolinite and gave it the present name.
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Osmium was discovered in 1803 by English chemist Smithson Tennant in London. Chemists who studied platinum dissolved it in aqua regia to create soluble salts and observed a small amount of a dark, insoluble residue. Smithson Tennant analyzed the insoluble residue and concluded that it must contain a new metal.
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Iridium was discovered in 1803 by English chemist Smithson Tennant in London. Chemists who studied platinum dissolved it in aqua regia to create soluble salts and observed a small amount of a dark, insoluble residue. Smithson Tennant analyzed the insoluble residue and concluded that it must contain a new metal.
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Platinum was first used by pre-Columbian South American natives to produce artifacts. Antonio de Ulloa published his findings about platinum in 1748, but Sir Charles Wood also investigated the metal in 1741. First reference to it as a new metal was made by William Brownrigg in 1750.
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Gold has been known since prehistoric times and was the first metal used by humans. Gold artifacts dated to 5000 years ago have been found in Egyptian tombs. Gold of 98% purity has been found in Nahal Qunah in the ancient kingdom of Israel, dating from about 6000 years ago.
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Mercury was known to the ancient Chinese and Indians and has been found in Egyptian tombs dating back to about 1500 BC. Alchemists thought of mercury as the First Matter from which all metals were formed. They believed that different metals could be produced by varying the quality and quantity of sulfur contained within the mercury.
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Thallium was discovered spectroscopically by Sir William Crookes in 1861, in London. In 1862, Claude-Auguste Lamy used a spectrometer to determine the composition of a selenium-containing substance which was deposited during the production of sulfuric acid from pyrite. He noticed the new green line in the spectra and concluded that a new element was present.
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Metallic lead beads dating back to 6400 BC have been found in Çatalhöyük in modern-day Turkey. The Romans also used lead in molten form to secure iron pins that held together large limestone blocks in certain monumental buildings. In alchemy, lead was thought to be the oldest metal and was associated with the planet Saturn.
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