Brandt, Hennig

In the seventeenth century there lived in Hamburg a merchant by the name of Hennig Brand (or Brandt), who was apparently the first man ever to discover an element. Of course, gold and lead and the other metals and non-metals used in ancient civilizations must have been dis-... 

In 1735 the cobalt ore used by the glass maker was examined by Georg Brandt, a Swede, born at Riddarhytta in Vestmanland in 1694, and not to be confused with Hennig Brand, the Hamburg merchant, who obtained phosphorus from urine in 1669 (p. 76). Brandt isolated a new metal from the mineral in impure form in 1742 and called it cobalt. That it was really a new metal was confirmed by Bergman in 1790 and by Tassaert in 1799. The real study of the chemistry of cobalt compounds began with the researches of Thenard in 1802 and of Proust in 1806. 

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