Elements, priorities definition

Niobium. The name columbium has only been used by American and some British authors. The name niobium, proposed by H. Rose who was the first to give definite proof of the existence of this element, is used in all other languages. On grounds of priority, there is no reason for preferring the name columbium (Larsson, 3). 

The decision on the priority of the discovery of a new chemical element is the responsibility of the lUPAC. The detailed definition of the criteria for the discovery of a new element was prepared by the Transfermium Working Group (Barber et aL 1992). O Table 19.2 displays the elements for which the priority of discovery has been assigned. The lUPAC accepted the following names and symbols for the transactinides (Sargeson 1997). The laboratories associated with their discovery as accepted by lUPAC are given in parentheses (Barber et al. 1992, 2009 Karol et al. 2001, 2003). 

By assigning references, the priority was given to objective evidence of one or more words, and/or contexts strongly associated between (i) definitions of the key elements cited in this section, and (ii) key elements to be included as concepts in the section 3.1. Additionally, it was used a lot more references (50 found references) than the ones included in the reference list of this paper, since only those most important were selected for this purpose. 

As shown in his textbook, Mendeleev s concept of the chemical elements demonstrates his persistent and firm belief in their conceptual priority. His clear understanding of the elements is evident from the very first edition. In his concept of elements, Mendeleev clearly departed from Lavoisier, who had offered a negative definition of an element as an undecomposed substance. For Mendeleev, the concept was defined positively as something abstracted from the diverse properties of simple bodies and their compounds. Therefore, elements were strictly distinguished from simple bodies. 

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