Arfwedson, Johan August

Lithium - the atomic number is 3 and the chemical symbol is Li. The name derives from the Latin lithos for stone because lithium was thought to exist only in minerals at that time. It was discovered by the Swedish mineralogist Johan August Arfwedson in 1818 in the mineral petalite LiAl(Si205)2. It was isolated in 1855 by the German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Augustus Matthiessen. 

The mineral petalite was mined as an ore in Sweden. In 1817 Johan August Arfwedson (1792—1841) analyTed this new mineral. After identifying several compounds in the ore, he realized there was a small percentage of the ore that could not be identified. After applying more analytical procedures, he determined it was a new alkali. It turned out that petalite contains hthium aluminum silicate, LiAllSi O lj. In 1818 the first lithium metal was prepared independently by two scientists, Sir Humphry Davy (1778—1892) and W.T. Brande (1788—1866). Lithium was discovered at a time in the early nineteenth century when numerous new elements were discovered and identified by other scientists. Many of these newly named elements were predicted by the use of the periodic table of the chemical elements. 

Johan August Arfwedson, the discoverer of lithium, was bom at Skagerholms-Bruk, Skaraborgs Lan, on January 12, 1792 (10). He studied chemistry under Berzelius, and it was in the latter s famous... 

Birth of Johan August Arfwedson, the discoverer of lithium, at Skagerholms-Bruk, Skaraborgs Lan. 

Credit for the discovery of lithium usually goes to Swedish chemist Johan August Arfwedson (or Arfvedson 1792-1841). Arfwedson found the new element in a mineral that had first been identified about 20 years earlier by Brazilian scientist Joze Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva (1763-1838). That mineral, petalite, is still a major source of lithium today. 

Swedish chemist Johan August Arfwedson discovers lithium. 

One of the greatest chemists of the 19th century was Jons Jakob Berzelius (1779-1848) of Sweden. In 1817, Berzelius put one of his assistants, Swedish chemist Johan August Arfwedson (1792-1841), to work analyzing the mineral petalite. Arfwedson could account for 96 percent of petalite s content, but the remaining 4 percent was a mystery. By 1818, Berzelius and Arfwedson had concluded that petalite must contain an unknown alkali metal. Petalite s composition proved to be lithium aluminum silicate, and Arfwedson is acknowledged as lithium s discoverer. The name lithium comes from the Greek word... 

Swedish chemist Johan August Arfwedson is born on January 12... 

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