A New Name Question

One name question had thus got an answer but another had arisen. About tantalum no further discussion was needed. But the lighter element - should it be called columbium following Hatchett or niobium following Heinrich Rose. And furthermore were columbium and niobium identical or two different elements An American chemist, J. Lawrence Smith, was contemporary with Rose and had studied with Justus Liebig in the 1840s. He was thus familiar with European chemical hterature and probably with Rose s work on niobium and tantalum. He was professor of chemistry at the university in Louisville 1854-1866 and in 1877 was the second president of the American Chemical Society. In 1877, Smith stated in the American Journal of Science that in 1844 Rose had been of the opinion that he had discovered a new element niobium while Hatchett s columbium was identical with tantalum. However, according to Smith, Rose s further work revealed that niobium was actually identical with columbium. That solved the chemical identification problems. The difficult name question - columbium or niobium - remained to be answered. 

Marignac accepted Rose s name niobium. It was also generally accepted on the European continent. In the USA the element s name was columbium in England both names were used. At the Amsterdam conference in 1949 of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry it was decided that the name niobium (Nb) should be valid for all the world and that columbium (Cb) should not be used. This is also contained in an official nomenclature report in J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1960, 82, 5525. 

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