Clarke, Edward Daniel

When Edward Daniel Clarke visited Falun, he said that "perhaps in no part of the world will the traveler meet with superintendents so well informed. .. at the head of whom is the celebrated Gahn, whose acquirements, and the kindness he has always shewn to strangers, have entitled him to respect and consideration in all the Academical Institutions of Europe.. . . Hospitality in a Swede is what we may always expect but the attention paid to strangers by Mr. Gahn, especially if their visits had... 

Edward Daniel Clarke, who visited him in 1799, described him as a most intelligent man and very able chemist, of the name of Hjelm,... 

Edward Daniel Clarke, 1769-1822. English mineralogist and traveler One of the founders of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. One of the first chemists to analyze the lithium mineral petalite. His Travels m Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa contains intimate glimpses of many con-tempoiary scientists and their laboratories. See ref. (49). 

Obituary of Edward Daniel Clarke, Annual Register, 1822, pp 274-6... 

Although the mineral (barite) in which this element was first recognized has a high specific gravity, the metal itself is very light. Edward Daniel Clarke objected therefore to the inappropriate name barium (meaning heavy) for this metal (105). The name persists nevertheless. 

In a letter to the Annals of Philosophy, dated Cambridge, February 18, 1820, Edward Daniel Clarke wrote as follows Some varieties of radiated blende from Przibram in Bohemia are described by Stromeyer as containing two or three per cent of cadmium. At a sale. .. in London, I procured specimens of the particular mineral thus alluded to, which were sold under the name of splendent fibrous blende from Przibram, pronounced Pritzbram. I found afterwards that they had been brought to England by Mr. J. Sowerby of Lisle-street, a dealer in minerals.. . . Upon my return to Cambridge, I endeavoured to obtain cadmium from this ore, and succeeded. . . (133). Clarke also found this element in die zinc silicate from Derbyshire, England, and his results were soon confirmed by W. H. Wollaston and J. G. Children. In 1822 Clarke published a paper on the presence of cadmium in commercial sheet zinc (134). 

It is interesting that this name, plutonium, had once before been suggested for an element. About 1817 Edward Daniel Clarke (1769— 1822), professor of mineralogy at Cambridge University, suggested that this name be used instead of barium, since barium metal was not unusually heavy. He suggested this name because barium, isolated by electrolysis, owed its existence to the dominion of fire (70). 

Webb, Nature, 1947, 160, 164. Reference is made to Rev. W. Otter, "Life and Remains of Edward Daniel Clarke" (London, 1825). 

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