History of the Elements

In recent years, a new source of information about stellar nucleosynthesis and the history of the elements between their ejection from stars and their incorporation into the solar system has become available. This source is the tiny dust grains that condensed from gas ejected from stars at the end of their lives and that survived unaltered to be incorporated into solar system materials. These presolar grains (Fig. 5.1) originated before the solar system formed and were part of the raw materials for the Sun, the planets, and other solar-system objects. They survived the collapse of the Sun s parent molecular cloud and the formation of the accretion disk and were incorporated essentially unchanged into the parent bodies of the chondritic meteorites. They are found in the fine-grained matrix of the least metamorphosed chondrites and in interplanetary dust particles (IDPs), materials that were not processed by high-temperature events in the solar system. 

The history of the elements is in many ways the history of chemistry and physics. Before the search for the elements, there was the philosophical question of what was an element. That question was posed more than 2,500 years ago, and it has had many solutions. Each in turn has given way to a new answer that was made possible by new theories, new tools, and new observations. Our current answer to what constitute an element looks like it has staying power, since it fits so well with so many other aspects of our understanding of chemistry and physics, but there are still aspects of matter that are unresolved. Future work on the origin of matter in the universe, work on dark matter and anti-matter, on superstrings and the interior of subatomic particles, could alter our understanding of the elements. 

Specific interest in the periodic table and the elements has produced a number of recent books. One of the first serious examinations of the history of the elements was done by May Elvira Weeks. Discovery of the Elements (1968), an updated version with material from Henry M. Leicester, can still be found in libraries. Richard Morris s The Last Sorcerers The Path from Alchemy to the Periodic Table (2003) is an excellent book, while Paul Strathern s Mendeleyev s Dream (2000) is a nontechnical look at the hunt for order among the elements that reads almost like a novel. More technical material on matter theory can be found in Antio Clericuzio, Elements, Principles, and Corpuscles A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century (2000) David M. Knight, Atoms and Elements. A Study of Theories of Matter in England in the Nineteenth Century (1967) and Mary Jo Nye, From Chemical Philosophy to Theoretical Chemistry Dynamics of Matter and Dynamics of Disciplines 1800-1950 (1993). 

Atomic weights and atomic numbers of the elements, listed alphabetically, are given on the front inside cover of this text. The values are a composite of the best agreements among the tables in the websites listed below. Additional information about each element can be found jBrom various versions of the periodic. table. There are many available on the Web. Following are some recommended ones. In most, you can click on an element and obtain atomic weight and number and other properties such as isotopes, physical properties, and history of the element. 

There have been a number of previous reviews of various aspects of the thermochemical properties of zirconium and its compounds. The chemical behaviour of zirconium was reviewed by Blumenthal [58BLU]. The review of [58BLU] contains an extensive history of the element and its compounds. It references much of the older literature, including those on the thermochemistry of zirconium and its compounds. The data given for thermochemical parameters in [58BLU], however, were not critically reviewed and therefore do not agree with the present review. Nevertheless, the review of [58BLU] is of particular value due to the detailed historical information it contains. 

Students routinely carry out this reaction in the lab, but few know the interesting history of the element or realize that care must be taken when using it. 

The uniform lanthanide pattern observed in crustal sediments on the earth, with its regular depletion in Eu, provides not only a key to the problem of sampling the continental crust, but also provides a crucial piece of evidence about crustal evolution. Eu is trivalent at the earth s surface, so that the observed depletion in upper crustal rocks recalls a previous history of the element as a divalent ion under more reducing conditions. It thus provides evidence that the upper crust of the earth resulted from production of granitic melts deep within the crust leading to retention of Eu in the deep crust, with a corresponding depletion at the present surface. 

The book ends with statistical data on the history of the elements. The concept of discovery of a chemical element is discussed again along with false discoveries of chemical elements (the section about false discoveries has been written by V. P. Mel nikov). 

The use of the term discovery is in this case quite arbitrary. Historically speaking, principal characters of this chapter were recognized as independent chemical elements relatively recently. A description of the early history of the elements of antiquity will of necessity have to pass over in silence the dates and the authors of the discoveries. Therefore, the manner of presentation of material in this chapter is rather unusual. It will be a short report on these elements and their application in the distant past. 

National Nuclear Data Center Who discovered chromium How did dubnium get its name You can find out all about the history of the elements on this website. 

Open a website containing details about the periodic table and/or history of the elements. Using information found... 

Barium carbonate, present in nature as terra ponderosa or witherite, was discovered in England and was described by William Withering, a colleague of Joseph Priestley. Scheele was the first to make clear the difference between barium and calcium (1774) and his achievement is quite on a par with Black s regarding magnesium oxide in 1755. In the latter case both Black and Davy are mentioned as the discoverers of the element, in the barium case Davy alone. Another inconsequence in the history of the elements. 

Marinsky beat a record for element discoverers. Only one year after his bachelor degree he took his place in the discovery history of the elements. 

It is the author s expectation that professional chemists, physicists, mineralogists, and metallurgists as well as students on different levels will find the history of the elements, their discovery and properties interesting and exciting. Also that the fact tables at the beginning of every element chapter shall be useful both in industrial and academic research and education. I dare also beheve that this book shall be a bridge-builder over the gap between science and technology on one side and culture and humanistic topics on the other side. To persuade technicians and scientists to be interested in cultural and historical questions and - on the other hand - make humanists interested in science as culture and of modern technical applications. 

While Part 5 deals with the regulation of lead in the human environment, it is not meant to be a statutory and governmental executive history of the element in various environments. The focus is on the processes by which regulatory actions for lead have occurred and are occurring within interactive, positive feedback loop cycles with the other two main topics in this book—scientific research and human health risk assessment. The extent to which these interactive relationships will continue to feed overall protections for public health is also discussed. 

Immunotoxic effects of Pb also played a role earlier in the clinical history of the element through categories of effects which clearly subsumed a significant immunological component. For example, early individual and consensus compendia on lead toxicity and that of other chemical substances often mentioned respiratory effects. A number of these effects had to do with altered host resistance to various inhaled pathogens and toxicants from... 

---