Kirchoff, Gustav

Rubidium - the atomic number is 37 and the chemical symbol is Rb. The name derives from the Latin rubidus for deepest red because of the two deep red lines in its spectra. It was discovered in the mineral lepidolite by the German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and the German physicist Gustav-Robert Kirchoff in 1861. Bimsen isolated rubidium in 1863. 

A few years previously, in 1859, the Germans Gustav Robert Kirchoff and Robert Bunsen had discovered that each element could be made to emit light, which could then be dispersed with a glass prism and analyzed quantitatively." What they also discovered was that every single element gave a unique spectrum... 

Other researchers were bringing on alternatives to these drawn and intuitive methods. A sequence of successes attracted talented mathematicians towards research in statics. Studies of differential equations seemed to show that certain of their characteristics, such as critical points, represented physical phenomena, providing otherwise unattainable insights into the nature of structural instability. Among a host of workers, D.J. Jourawski (1821-1891), Gustave Kirchoff (1824-1887), George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903), Franz Neumann (1798-1895) and William John Macquorn Rankine... 

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