"potassium is a necessary element for plants and that most types of soil lack potassium caused a steep rise in demand for potassium salts. Wood-ash from fir trees was initially used as a potassium salt source for fertilizer, but, with the discovery in 1868 of mineral deposits containing potassium chloride near Staßfurt, Germany, the production of potassium-containing fertilizers began at an industrial scale. Other potash deposits were discovered, and by the 1960s Canada became the dominant producer. Potassium ""metal"" was first isolated in 1807 by Sir Humphry Davy, who derived it from caustic potash (KOH, potassium hydroxide) by electrolysis of"
"books are as follows: Davy also contributed articles on chemistry to ""Rees's Cyclopædia"", but the topics are not known. His collected works were published in 1839–1840: Humphry Davy Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet (17 December 177829 May 1829) was a Cornish chemist and inventor, who is best remembered today for isolating, using electricity, a series of elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. He also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field"
"Humphry Davy Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet (17 December 177829 May 1829) was a Cornish chemist and inventor, who is best remembered today for isolating, using electricity, a series of elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. He also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. In 1799 Davy experimented with nitrous oxide and became astonished that it made him laugh, so he nicknamed it ""laughing gas"", and wrote about"
"made between potassium and sodium. Sodium was first isolated by Davy in the same year by passing an electric current through molten sodium hydroxide (NaOH). When Davy heard that Berzelius and Pontin prepared calcium amalgam by electrolyzing lime in mercury, he tried it himself. Davy was successful, and discovered calcium in 1808 by electrolyzing a mixture of lime and mercuric oxide. He worked with electrolysis throughout his life and, in 1808, he isolated magnesium, strontium and barium. Davy also experimented with gases by inhaling them. This experimental procedure nearly proved fatal on several occasions, but led to the discovery of"
"prove this difference in 1736. The exact chemical composition of potassium and sodium compounds, and the status as chemical element of potassium and sodium, was not known then, and thus Antoine Lavoisier did not include either alkali in his list of chemical elements in 1789. Pure potassium was first isolated in 1807 in England by Sir Humphry Davy, who derived it from caustic potash (KOH, potassium hydroxide) by the use of electrolysis of the molten salt with the newly invented voltaic pile. Previous attempts at electrolysis of the aqueous salt were unsuccessful due to potassium's extreme reactivity. Potassium was the"
"foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1810 and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822. Davy was a pioneer in the field of electrolysis using the voltaic pile to split common compounds and thus prepare many new elements. He went on to electrolyse molten salts and discovered several new metals, including sodium and potassium, highly reactive elements known as the alkali metals. Davy discovered potassium in 1807, deriving it from caustic potash (KOH). Before the 19th century, no distinction had been made between potassium and sodium. Potassium was the"
"first metal that was isolated by electrolysis. Davy isolated sodium in the same year by passing an electric current through molten sodium hydroxide. During the first half of 1808, Davy conducted a series of further electrolysis experiments on alkaline earths including lime, magnesia, strontites and barytes. At the beginning of June, Davy received a letter from the Swedish chemist Berzelius claiming that he, in conjunction with Dr. Pontin, had successfully obtained amalgams of calcium and barium by electrolysing lime and barytes using a mercury cathode. Davy managed to successfully repeat these experiments almost immediately and expanded Berzelius' method to strontites"
"of his remaining life administering and multiplying his inherited wealth. He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1821. The rare mineral arfvedsonite was named after him. Johan August Arfwedson Johan August Arfwedson (12 January 1792 – 28 October 1841) was a Swedish chemist who discovered the chemical element lithium in 1817 by isolating it as a salt. Arfwedson belonged to a wealthy bourgeois family, the son of the wholesale merchant and factory owner Jacob Arfwedson and his spouse, Anna Elisabeth Holtermann. The younger Arfwedson matriculated as a student at the University of Uppsala in"
"name derives from Latin ""calx"" ""lime"", which was obtained from heating limestone. Some calcium compounds were known to the ancients, though their chemistry was unknown until the seventeenth century. Pure calcium was isolated in 1808 via electrolysis of its oxide by Humphry Davy, who named the element. Calcium compounds are widely used in many industries: in foods and pharmaceuticals for calcium supplementation, in the paper industry as bleaches, as components in cement and electrical insulators, and in the manufacture of soaps. On the other hand, the metal in pure form has few applications due to its high reactivity; still, in"
"beryllium were isolated by electrolysis of molten compounds. Magnesium, calcium, and strontium were first produced by Humphry Davy in 1808, whereas beryllium was independently isolated by Friedrich Wöhler and Antoine Bussy in 1828 by reacting beryllium compounds with potassium. In 1910, radium was isolated as a pure metal by Curie and André-Louis Debierne also by electrolysis. Beryl, a mineral that contains beryllium, has been known since the time of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. Although it was originally thought that beryl was an aluminium silicate, beryl was later found to contain a then-unknown element when, in 1797, Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin dissolved"
"molybdenum, tungsten, and chromium; and some of the platinum group metals, palladium, osmium, iridium, and rhodium. All metals discovered until 1809 had relatively high densities; their heaviness was regarded as a singularly distinguishing criterion. From 1809 onwards, light metals such as sodium, potassium, and strontium were isolated. Their low densities challenged conventional wisdom as to the nature of metals. They behaved chemically as metals however, and were subsequently recognised as such. Aluminium was discovered in 1824 but it was not until 1886 that an industrial large-scale production method was developed. Prices of aluminium dropped and aluminium became widely used in"
"Johan August Arfwedson Johan August Arfwedson (12 January 1792 – 28 October 1841) was a Swedish chemist who discovered the chemical element lithium in 1817 by isolating it as a salt. Arfwedson belonged to a wealthy bourgeois family, the son of the wholesale merchant and factory owner Jacob Arfwedson and his spouse, Anna Elisabeth Holtermann. The younger Arfwedson matriculated as a student at the University of Uppsala in 1803 (at the time, matriculating at a young age was common for aristocratic and wealthy students), completed a degree in Law in 1809 and a second degree in mineralogy in 1812. In"
"Smithson Tennant Smithson Tennant FRS (30 November 1761 – 22 February 1815) was an English chemist. Tennant is best known for his discovery of the elements iridium and osmium, which he found in the residues from the solution of platinum ores in 1803. He also contributed to the proof of the identity of diamond and charcoal. The mineral tennantite is named after him. Tennant was born in Selby in Yorkshire. His father was Calvert Tennant (named after his grandmother Phyllis Calvert, a granddaughter of Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore). His own name derives from his grandmother Rebecca Smithson, widow of"
"Antoine Lavoisier suspected that lime might be an oxide of a fundamental chemical element. In his table of the elements, Lavoisier listed five ""salifiable earths"" (i.e., ores that could be made to react with acids to produce salts (""salis"" = salt, in Latin): ""chaux"" (calcium oxide), ""magnésie"" (magnesia, magnesium oxide), ""baryte"" (barium sulfate), ""alumine"" (alumina, aluminium oxide), and ""silice"" (silica, silicon dioxide). About these ""elements"", Lavoisier speculated: Calcium, along with its congeners magnesium, strontium, and barium, was first isolated by Humphry Davy in 1808. Following the work of Jöns Jakob Berzelius and Magnus Martin af Pontin on electrolysis, Davy isolated"
"first metal that was isolated by electrolysis. Later that same year, Davy reported extraction of sodium from the similar substance caustic soda (NaOH, lye) by a similar technique, demonstrating the elements, and thus the salts, to be different. Petalite (Li Al SiO) was discovered in 1800 by the Brazilian chemist José Bonifácio de Andrada in a mine on the island of Utö, Sweden. However, it was not until 1817 that Johan August Arfwedson, then working in the laboratory of the chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, detected the presence of a new element while analysing petalite ore. This new element was noted"
"and be exchanged for elements in chemical compounds. Thus the foundation was laid of the doctrine of compound radicals, a doctrine which had a profound influence on the development of chemistry. Since the discovery of potassium by Humphry Davy, it had been assumed that alumina, the basis of clay, contained a metal in combination with oxygen. Davy, Ørsted, and Berzelius attempted the extraction of this metal, but failed. Wöhler then worked on the same subject, and discovered the metal aluminium in 1827. To him also is due the isolation of the elements yttrium, beryllium, and titanium, the observation that ""silicium"""
"the water's bitter taste, but the farmer noticed that the water seemed to heal scratches and rashes. The substance became known as Epsom salts and its fame spread. It was eventually recognized as hydrated magnesium sulfate, ·7. The metal itself was first isolated by Sir Humphry Davy in England in 1808. He used electrolysis on a mixture of magnesia and mercuric oxide. Antoine Bussy prepared it in coherent form in 1831. Davy's first suggestion for a name was magnium, but the name magnesium is now used. Magnesium is the third-most-commonly-used structural metal, following iron and aluminium. The main applications of"
"salts, he named it from the Ancient Greek ""λανθάνειν"" [lanthanein] (lit. ""to lie hidden""). Relatively pure lanthanum metal was first isolated in 1923. Lutetium was independently discovered in 1907 by French scientist Georges Urbain, Austrian mineralogist Baron Carl Auer von Welsbach, and American chemist Charles James as an impurity in the mineral ytterbia, which was thought by most chemists to consist entirely of ytterbium. Welsbach proposed the names ""cassiopeium"" for element 71 (after the constellation Cassiopeia) and ""aldebaranium"" (after the star Aldebaran) for the new name of ytterbium but these naming proposals were rejected, although many German scientists in the"
"Augustus Matthiessen Augustus Matthiessen, FRS (2 January 1831, in London – 6 October 1870, in London), the son of a merchant, was a British chemist and physicist who obtained his PhD in Germany at the University of Gießen in 1852 with Johann Heinrich Buff. He then worked with Robert Bunsen at the University of Heidelberg from 1853 to 1856. His work in this period included the isolation of calcium and strontium in their pure states. He then returned to London and studied with August Wilhelm von Hofmann from 1857 at the Royal College of Chemistry, and set up his own"
"tree leaves, adding water, heating, and evaporating the solution. When Humphry Davy first isolated the pure element using electrolysis in 1807, he named it ""potassium"", which he derived from the word potash. The symbol ""K"" stems from ""kali"", itself from the root word ""alkali"", which in turn comes from """" ""al-qalyah"" ""plant ashes."" In 1797, the German chemist Martin Klaproth discovered ""potash"" in the minerals leucite and lepidolite, and realized that ""potash"" was not a product of plant growth but actually contained a new element, which he proposed to call ""kali"". In 1807, Humphry Davy produced the element via electrolysis:"
"the Royal Society. Barite, a mineral containing barium, was first recognized as containing a new element in 1774 by Carl Scheele, although he was able to isolate only barium oxide. Barium oxide was isolated again two years later by Johan Gottlieb Gahn. Later in the 18th century, William Withering noticed a heavy mineral in the Cumberland lead mines, which are now known to contain barium. Barium itself was finally isolated in 1808 when Sir Humphry Davy used electrolysis with molten salts, and Davy named the element ""barium"", after baryta. Later, Robert Bunsen and Augustus Matthiessen isolated pure barium by electrolysis"
"be reduced to their elements, meaning that the discovery of a new earth was equivalent to the discovery of the element within, which in this case would have been ""yttrium"". Until the early 1920s, the chemical symbol ""Yt"" was used for the element, after which ""Y"" came into common use. Yttrium metal was first isolated in 1828 when Friedrich Wöhler heated anhydrous yttrium(III) chloride with potassium to form metallic yttrium and potassium chloride. In 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published his periodic table, which had empty spaces for elements directly above and under yttrium. Mendeleev made several predictions on the"
"and magnesia. He noted that while these amalgams oxidated in only a few minutes when exposed to air they could be preserved for lengthy periods of time when submerged in naphtha before becoming covered with a white crust. On 30 June 1808 Davy reported to the Royal Society that he had successfully isolated four new metals which he named barium, calcium, strontium and magnium (later changed to magnesium) which were subsequently published in the ""Philosophical Transactions"". Although Davy conceded magnium was an ""undoubtedly objectionable"" name he argued the more appropriate name magnesium was already being applied to metallic manganese and"
"Institut de France in 1807 (despite the fact that England and France were at war at the time). This work led directly to the isolation of sodium and potassium from their common compounds and of the alkaline earth metals from theirs in 1808. Hans Christian Ørsted's discovery of the magnetic effect of electric currents in 1820 was immediately recognised as an important advance, although he left further work on electromagnetism to others. André-Marie Ampère quickly repeated Ørsted's experiment, and formulated them mathematically (which became Ampère's law) . Ørsted also discovered that not only is a magnetic needle deflected by the"
"first discovered by Jons Jacob Berzelius in 1828. After receiving a sample of minerals from his colleague Jens Esmarck, Berzelius was able to isolate thorium using a method that had been used for other metals like cerium, zirconium, and titanium. This process involved using alkali metals to disassociate the thorium from its prior ligand form ThSiO (further described in synthesis). An intermediate in the isolation process was thorium(IV) chloride and thus the compound was discovered. The structure of thorium(IV) chloride is square planar with a symmetry of D. In this coordinate compound the bond length between the Th-Cl bond is"
"Martin Heinrich Klaproth Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1 December 1743 – 1 January 1817) was a German chemist who discovered uranium (1789), zirconium (1789), and cerium (1803), and named titanium (1795) and tellurium (1798). Klaproth was born in Wernigerode. During a large portion of his life he followed the profession of an apothecary. After acting as assistant in pharmacies at Quedlinburg, Hanover, Berlin and Danzig successively he came to Berlin on the death of Valentin Rose the Elder in 1771 as manager of his business, and in 1780 he started an establishment on his own account in the same city, where"
"Nils Gabriel Sefström of Sweden rediscovered the element. He gave it its current name, ""vanadium"", in honor of the Scandinavian goddess of love and beauty, Vanadis. In the same year, Friedrich Wöhler, the German chemist who had synthesized urea, analyzed some of del Río's samples and proved that vanadium and erythronium were the same. Later the U.S. geologist George William Featherstonhaugh proposed without success that the element should be named ""rionium"", in honor of its original discoverer. In 1867 the English chemist Henry Enfield Roscoe isolated the pure metal for the first time. He used hydrogen to get rid of"
"1784 on he was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. His last position director of the Chemical Laboratory at the Ministry of Mining. Peter Jacob Hjelm Peter (Petter) Jacob Hjelm (2 October 1746 – 7 October 1813) was a Swedish chemist and the first person to isolate the element molybdenum in 1781, four years after its discovery by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Hjelm was born at Sunnerbo in Småland, Sweden. He was raised in the parish of Göteryd in Älmhult, the son of parish priest Erik Hjelm and Cecilia Cecilia Gistrénia. After his studies at the"
"chloride for use as a deicing agent and a nutrient. The free metal, elemental sodium, does not occur in nature but must be prepared from sodium compounds. Elemental sodium was first isolated by Humphry Davy in 1807 by the electrolysis of sodium hydroxide. The same ion is also a component of many minerals, such as sodium nitrate. ""Magnesium"" (symbol Mg) is an alkaline earth metal and has common oxidation number +2. It is the eighth most abundant element in the Earth's crust and ninth in the known universe as a whole. Magnesium is the fourth most common element in the"
"only barium oxide. Johan Gottlieb Gahn also isolated barium oxide two years later in similar studies. Oxidized barium was at first called ""barote"" by Guyton de Morveau, a name that was changed by Antoine Lavoisier to ""baryta."" Also in the 18th century, English mineralogist William Withering noted a heavy mineral in the lead mines of Cumberland, now known to be witherite. Barium was first isolated by electrolysis of molten barium salts in 1808 by Sir Humphry Davy in England. Davy, by analogy with calcium, named ""barium"" after baryta, with the ""-ium"" ending signifying a metallic element. Robert Bunsen and Augustus"
"this suggests that he had obtained an aluminium–potassium alloy rather than pure aluminium. Ørsted gave little importance to his discovery. He did not notify either Davy or Berzelius, both of whom he knew, and published his work in a Danish magazine unknown to the general European public. As a result, he is often not credited as the discoverer of the element; some earlier sources went further and claimed Ørsted had not isolated aluminium. Berzelius tried to isolate the metal in 1825 by carefully washing the potassium analog of the base salt in cryolite in a crucible. Prior to the experiment,"
"both the acidic and basic ingredients. Berzelius himself discovered and isolated several new elements, including cerium (1803) and thorium (1828). Berzelius’s interest in mineralogy also fostered his analysis and preparation of new compounds of these and other elements. The mineral berzelianite was discovered in 1850 and named after him. He was a strict empiricist and insisted that any new theory be consistent with the sum of chemical knowledge. He developed classical analytical techniques, and investigated isomerism and catalysis, phenomena that owe their names to him. He became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1808 and served"
"when Humphry Davy, in England, used electrolysis on a mixture of lime and mercuric oxide, after hearing that Jöns Jakob Berzelius had prepared a calcium amalgam from the electrolysis of lime in mercury. In 1790, physician Adair Crawford discovered ores with distinctive properties, which were named ""strontites"" in 1793 by Thomas Charles Hope, a chemistry professor at the University of Glasgow, who confirmed Crawford's discovery. Strontium was eventually isolated in 1808 by Sir Humphry Davy by electrolysis of a mixture of strontium chloride and mercuric oxide. The discovery was announced by Davy on 30 June 1808 at a lecture to"