0.1 Chemical Elements - How They Were Discovered

The following is a series of articles borrowed from "Chemical Elements : How They Were Discovered" an amazing book on the history of the discovery of elements published by MIR in 1982. Several more elements were discovered after the book was published. Nearly 40 years later, this book continues to be one of the best books on the history of elements (with a tinge of bias towards Soviet science).

Chemical Elements - How They Were Discovered

Notice to the Reader

The language of chemistry has its own alphabet. Its letters are symbols of chemical elements; the number of combinations of letters, words composed of them, is infinite — the endless variety of chemical compounds. More than four million chemical compounds are known at present and this number increases each week by six thousand. Apparently, this "word-building" in chemistry is a non-stop process.

Individual letters or elements are much fewer in number: today there are only one hundred and seven of them. Several thousand years were required to compile the alphabet of the language of chemistry but most of the letters were deciphered only during the last two hundred years. It was during this short span of time that chemistry emerged as a science.

All chemical compounds that constitute living and inorganic matter are diverse combinations of eighty-odd elements. The remaining known elements are practically not found in nature. Scientists created them artificially by means of nuclear reactions. More new elements can be obtained in this manner and we do not know how many of them. But it is quite clear that the chemical alphabet is not complete yet.

In this book we shall describe how the alphabet of chemistry has been designed and how the inquisitive mind of the researchers discovered new chemical elements, one after another.

Books have been written about practically all chemical elements—enough to stock a great library. They describe minerals and ores containing chemical elements, processes of their extraction, physical and chemical properties of the elements, and their uses. Many elements are surprisingly abundant.: they can be used in the widely disparate and unexpected fields for the good of mankind. Almost every element has an important role to play in today's advanced science and technology.

The history of chemical elements begins with their discovery. Although hefty volumes in which elements are described in detail pay very little attention to their discoveries, they are a major part of the history of human knowledge.

Each element has its own "biography", interesting in its own way. The history of the discovery of many elements has not yet been exhaustively studied and quite a number of unclear issues should be cleared by historians of chemistry. Perhaps you will be one of them...

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