Cobalt (Co)
Cobalt was discovered by Swedish chemist Georg Brandt in 1735 when he was studying minerals that gave glass a deep blue color. Brandt was the first to demonstrate that the…
Category: Period Table of Elements
Iron (Fe)
Iron is one of the earliest metals discovered and used by human civilizations, with its use dating back to at least 5000 years. Because of its early discovery, no single…
Manganese (Mn)
Manganese was recognized as an element by the Swedish chemist Johan Gottlieb Gahn in 1774, though compounds containing manganese, such as pyrolusite, were used by ancient civilizations thousands of years…
Chromium (Cr)
Chromium was discovered by the French chemist Louis Nicolas Vauquelin in 1797. While analyzing samples of Siberian red lead (now known as crocoite, or lead chromate), Vauquelin isolated chromium as…
Vanadium (V)
Vanadium was first discovered by the Spanish-Mexican mineralogist Andrés Manuel del Río in 1801 in the mineral vanadinite. Del Río initially named it “erythronium” due to the red color of…
Titanium (Ti)
Titanium was discovered in 1791 by William Gregor, an English clergyman, and mineralogist, in the mineral ilmenite from a stream in Cornwall, England. He detected the presence of a new…
Scandium (Sc)
Scandium was discovered in 1879 by Swedish chemist Lars Fredrik Nilson. He isolated scandium by analyzing the minerals euxenite and gadolinite, where he detected a new element that matched Dmitri…
Calcium (Ca)
Calcium was isolated by Sir Humphry Davy in 1808, shortly after his discovery of potassium and sodium. Davy used electrolysis to extract calcium from a mixture of lime (CaO) and…
Potassium (K)
Potassium was first isolated by Sir Humphry Davy in 1807 through the electrolysis of potash (KOH, potassium hydroxide), making it the first metal to be isolated by electrolysis. This discovery…
Argon (Ar)
Argon was discovered in 1894 by Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay in London. Their discovery came about while they were investigating why nitrogen extracted from the air was denser…