Contributions of the de Elhuyar brothers

The two most glorious monuments of the Sociedad Vascongada are the Seminary of Vergara and the House of Mercy of Vitoria.. . . This Seminary was the first in Spain in which virtue was united with the teaching of the sciences most useful to the state. Vergara was the first town in which chairs of chemistry and metallurgy were founded. 

Soon after this Seminary was founded in 1777, two brilliant and promising youths of Basque and French lineage, Don Juan Jose de Elhuyar y de Zubice (1754-1796) and his younger brother, Don Fausto, were commissioned to study abroad. Don Juan Jose was sent by the King 

Don Fausto was bom at Logrono in northern Spain on October 11, 1755, and was educated in Paris under the best masters. While the gifted 

The Seminary of Vergara. It was here that Don Juan Jose and Don Fausto de Elhuyar carried out their remarkable analysis of wolframite, which resulted in the isolation of a new metal, wolfram, or tungsten. Among the professors at this Seminary were L.-J. Proust, Francois Chabaneau, and Fausto de Elhuyar.  

Abraham Gottlob Werner, 1750-1817. Professor of geognosy at the Freiberg School of Mines. Because his followers believed in the aqueous origin of rocks, they were called Neptunists. Among his distinguished students were the de Elhuyar brothers, Baron Alexander von Humboldt, and A. M. del Rio, the discoverer of vanadium (eryth-ronium). 

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