Discovery of Nitrogen

McKee, D., Daniel Rutherford and the discovery of nitrogen, Sci. Progress,... 

In his doctor s thesis Rutherford made a clear distinction between nitrogen and carbon dioxide which most of his contemporaries had failed to observe. Henry Cavendish, however, had made this distinction somewhat earlier, but had failed to publish his results. The names of Priestley and Scheele are also intimately connected with the discovery of nitrogen. 

Sir William Ramsay believed that Rutherford may well be credited with the discovery of nitrogen" and that his thesis on mephitic air was an advance, though not a great one, in the development of the theory of the true nature of air (15). B. B. Woodward believed, however, that all the facts and views recorded by Rutherford are to be found in Priestley s memoir published in die Philosophical Transactions for 1772 (p. 230 et passim), and read six months before the publication of Rutherford s tract but Priestley s exposition is less methodical and precise (14). Both Rutherford and Priestley believed the new gas to be atmospheric air saturated with phlogiston, and neither of them regarded it as an element (14). 

In his Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry, Dr. Joseph Black made the following statement about the discovery of nitrogen ... 

Credit for the discovery of nitrogen is usually given to the Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772, although Henry Cavendish, Joseph Priestly, and Carl Scheele could also claim to have discovered the element at about the same time. Nitrogen was first identified as the product left behind when a substance was burned in a closed sample of air (which, of course, removed the oxygen component of air). 

The discovery of nitrogen in 1772 is generally credited to Daniel Rutherford, though the gas was also isolated independently about the same time by both C, W. Scheele and... 

The topics that will be covered in this chapter include the origin and discovery of nitrogen the nitrogen cycle nitrogens role in fertilizers, explosives, and air pollution and technological uses of nitrogen. 

Of course, no such philosophers stone was ever discovered. Scientists did in fact eventually learn howto convert one element into another element, but that story is told later in these volumes. In addition, even though the concept of the philosophers stone was abandoned by the 16th century, the concept that metals contained a combustible principle persisted. This combustible principle was called phlogiston its story is explained in the sections on the discoveries of nitrogen and oxygen. 

The study of the atmosphere led to the discovery of nitrogen. Although it is associated with the name of a certain scientist and a certain date, this certainty is misleading. It is rather difficult to separate the history of nitrogen discovery from the mainstream of pneumatic chemistry one can only think of a more or less logical sequence of events. 

His large contributions to the development of chemistry and physics, and his discovery of magnesium, have been described in Chapter 14 Magnesium and Calcium. In his textbook Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry, Vol. 2, edited posthumously in 1803, he mentions the work of both Carl WiUiehn Scheele and Daniel Rutherford (Black s own student in Edinburgh) in the discovery of nitrogen. 

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