Greek ακτίνα (aktína =
beam). Actinium was discovered
in
1899 by
André-Louis Debierne, a
French chemist, who separated
it from
pitchblende.
Friedrich Otto Giesel
independently discovered
actinium in
1902. The chemical
behavior of actinium is
similar to that of the rare
earth
lanthanum. The word
actinium comes from the Greek
aktis, aktinos, meaning
beam or ray.
Antimony was recognized in
antiquity (3000
BC or earlier) in various
compounds, and it was prized
for its fine
casting qualities. It was
first reported scientifically
by
Tholden in
1450, and was known to be
a metal by the beginning of
the
17th century. The origin
of the name "antimony" is not
clear; the term may come from
the
Greek words "anti" and "monos",
which approximately means
"opposed to solitude" as it
was thought never to exist in
its pure form, or from the
Pharaonic (Ancient egypt)
expression "Antos Ammon",
which could be translated as
"bloom of the god Ammon".
The word arsenic' is
borrowed from the
Persian word زرنيخ
Zarnik meaning "yellow
orpiment". Zarnik
was borrowed by
Greek as arsenikon.
Arsenic has been known and
used in
Persia and elsewhere since
ancient times. As the symptoms
of
arsenic poisoning were
somewhat ill-defined, it was
frequently used for
murder until the advent of
the
Marsh test, a sensitive
chemical test for its
presence.
The name beryllium comes
from the
Greekberyllos,
beryl. At one time beryllium
was referred to as
glucinium (from
Greekglykys,
sweet), due to the sweet taste
of its
salts. This element was
discovered by
Louis Vauquelin in
1798 as the oxide in
beryl and in
emeralds.
Bismuth (New
Latinbisemutum
from
GermanWismuth,
perhaps from weiße Masse,
"white mass") was confused in
early times with
tin and
lead due to its
resemblance to those elements.
Claude Geoffroy le Jeune
(Claude Geoffroy the younger)
showed in
1753 that this metal is
distinct from lead.
Bohrium was
synthesized in
1976 by a
Soviet team led by Y.
Oganessian at the Joint
Institute for Nuclear Research
at
Dubna, who produced
isotope 261Bh with
a half-life of 1-2 ms (later
data give a half life of
around 10 ms). In
1981 a
German research team led
by P. Armbruster and G.
Münzenberg at the
Gesellschaft für
Schwerionenforschung
(Institute for Heavy Ion
Research) at Darmstadt were
also able to confirm the
Soviet team's results and
produce bohrium, this time the
longer-lived Bh-262.
The Germans suggested the
name nielsbohrium to honor the
Danish physicist
Niels Bohr. The Soviets
had suggested this name be
given to element 105 (dubnium).
There was an
element naming controversy
as to what the elements from
101 to 109 were to be called;
thus
IUPAC adopted unnilseptium
(symbol Uns) as a temporary,
systematic element name
for this element. In
1994 a committee of IUPAC
recommended that element 107
be named bohrium. While this
conforms to the names of other
elements honoring individuals,
where only the surname is
taken, it was opposed by many
who were concerned that it
could be confused with
boron. Despite this, the
name bohrium for element 107
was recognized internationally
in
1997.
Compounds of boron (ArabicBuraq from
PersianBurah) have
been known of for thousands of
years. In early Egypt,
mummification depended
upon an ore known as
natron, which contained
borates as well as some other
common salts. Borax
glazes were used in
China from 300 AD, and
boron compounds were used in
glassmaking in ancient Rome.
Cadmium (Latincadmia,
Greekkadmeia
meaning "calamine")
was
discovered in
Germany in
1817 by
Friedrich Strohmeyer.
Strohmeyer found the new
element within an impurity in
zinc carbonate (calamine)
and for 100 years Germany
remained the only important
producer of the metal. The
metal was named after the
Latin word for calamine since
the metal was found in this
zinc compound. Strohmeyer
noted that some impure samples
of calamine changed color when
heated but pure calamine did
not.
Caesium (Latincaesius meaning "sky
blue") was
spectroscopically
discovered by
Robert Bunsen and
Gustav Kirchhoff in
1860 in
mineral water from
Dürkheim, Germany. Its
identification was based upon
the bright blue lines in its
spectrum and it was the first
element discovered by spectrum
analysis. The first caesium
metal was produced in
1881. Historically, the
most important use for caesium
has been in research and
development, primarily in
chemical and electrical
applications.
The name comes from
Frenchcharbone,
which in turn came from
Latincarbo,
meaning charcoal. In
German and
Dutch, the names for
carbon are Kohlenstoff
and koolstof
respectively, both literally
meaning "coal-stuff".
Greek χλωρος (chlorós =
yellowish green). Chlorine (Gr.
χλωρος, greenish yellow) was
discovered in
1774 by
Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who
mistakenly thought it
contained
oxygen. Chlorine was given
its name in
1810 by
Humphry Davy, who insisted
that it was in fact an
element.
The word cobalt comes from
the German kobalt or
kobold, meaning evil
spirit, the metal being so
called by miners, because it
was poisonous and troublesome
(it
polluted and degraded the
other mined elements, like
nickel). Other sources
cite the origin as stemming
from silver miners' belief
that cobalt had been placed by
kobolds who had stolen the
silver. Some also think the
name may derive from
Greekkobalos,
which means 'mine', and which
may have common roots with
kobold, goblin, and cobalt.
In Greek times, the metal
was known by the name
chalkos (χαλκός). Copper
was a very important resource
for the Romans and Greeks. In
Roman times, it became known
as aes Cyprium (aes
being the generic Latin term
for copper alloys such as
bronze and other metals,
and because so much of it was
mined in
Cyprus). From this, the
phrase was simplified to
cuprum and then eventually
Anglicized into the English
copper.
Erbium (for
Ytterby, a town in
Sweden) was
discovered by
Carl Gustaf Mosander in
1843. Mosander separated "yttria"
from the mineral
gadolinite into three
fractions which he called
yttria,
erbia, and
terbia. He named the new
element after the town of
Ytterby where large
concentrations of yttria and
erbium are located. Erbia and
terbia, however, were confused
in at this time. After
1860, what had been known
as terbia was renamed erbia
and after
1877 what had been known
as erbia was renamed terbia.
Gallium (LatinGallia meaning
Gaul; also gallus,
meaning "rooster") was
discovered
spectroscopically by
Lecoq de Boisbaudran in
1875 by its characteristic
spectrum (two
violet lines) in an
examination of a zinc blend
from the
Pyrenees. Before its
discovery, most of its
properties had been predicted
and described by
Dmitri Mendeleev (who
called the hypothetical
element
eka-aluminium) on the
basis of its position in his
periodic table. Later, in
1875, Boisbaudran obtained the
free metal through the
electrolysis of its
hydroxide in
KOH solution. He named the
element after his native land
of
France and, in one of
those multilingual puns so
beloved of men of science of
the early
19th century, after
himself, as 'Lecoq' = the
rooster, and
Latin for rooster is "gallus".
In
1871 germanium (LatinGermania for
Germany) was one of the
elements that
Dmitri Mendeleev predicted
to exist as a missing analogue
of the
silicon group (Mendeleev
called it "ekasilicon").
The existence of this element
was proven by
Clemens Winkler in
1886. This discovery was
an important confirmation of
Mendeleev's idea of element
periodicity.
Gold (Sanskritjval,
Greek χρυσος [khrusos],
Latinaurum for
"shining dawn",
Anglo-Saxongold,
Chinese 金 [jīn])
has been known and highly
valued since prehistoric
times. It may have been the
first metal used by
humans and was valued for
ornamentation and rituals.
Egyptian hieroglyphs from
