0rsted, Hans

Although aluminum is the most, abundant metal on earth, no one had ever seen it until 1825 when a Danish scientist, Hans Christian 0rsted, isolated it... 

Astronomy and chemistry are usually considered very different sciences, with very different historical paths. Whereas astronomy is observational and based on the exact laws of celestial dynamics, chemistry is the archetypical experimental science. Yet speculations about interconnections between the two fields can be found far back in time. To mention but one example, in his 1807 lectures on the history of chemistry, Hans Christian 0rsted prophesied that some day chemistry will have just as much influence on astronomy as mechanics so far. He added that Then it will be necessary to regard external motion as a product of internal forces, and all natural science will finally become a cosmogony. [4] 0rsted s prophecy eventually became reality, but the path followed from chemistry to astronomy took a different direction than imagined by the Danish scientist. To become useful in the science of the heavens, chemistry first had to prove its worth in the study of the earth. 

H.C. 0rsted, Reflections on the history of chemistry," in K. Jelved, A. Jackson, and O. Knudsen (eds.), Selected Scientific Works of Hans Christian 0rsted (Princeton, 1998), 243-260, on 253. 0rsted s essay was originally published in Danish and also appeared in Journal fur die Chemie und Physik 3 (1807) 194-231. 

R.M. Brain and O. Knudsen (eds.) Hans Christian 0rsted and the Romantic Quest for Unity. 

Aluminum is a silvety-white metalfic element discovered in 1825 by Danish chemist Hans Christian 0rsted. It is the most abtmdant metal fotmd in Earth s crust, comprising 8.3 percent of the crust s total weight. Its content in seawater, however, is as low as 0.01 gram per metric ton (0.01 part per million). The key isotope of aluminum is Al with a natural abundance of 100 percent, but seven other isotopes are known, one of which is used as a radioactive tracer ( " Al). 

The University of Copenhagen was founded in 1479. The first professorship of chemistry was primarily a chair of physics and it was established in 1753 at the faculty of medicine. From 1806, the chair was transferred to the faculty of arts simultaneously with the appointment of Hans Christian 0rsted as professor. 0rsted was instrumental in the establishment of the first full professorship of chemistry in 1822, to which William Christopher Zeise was appointed. When... 

The first full professor of chemistry at Copenhagen University, W.C. Zeise, was, like the famous Hans Christian 0rsted (1777-1851), a graduate in pharmacy from that same institution. The second, Edvard Scharling (1807-1866), appointed in 1842, was not only a graduate of pharmacy, but also of chemistry (applied... 

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