Klaus. Karl Karlovich

Ruthenium - the atomic number is 44 and the chemcial symbol is Ru. The name derives from the Latin ruthenia for the old name of Russia . It was discovered in a crude platinum ore by the Russian chemist Gottfried Wilhelm Osann in 1828. Osann thought that he had found three new metals in the sample, pluranium, ruthenium and polinium.He later withdrew his claim of discovery. In 1844 the Russian chemist Karl Karlovich Klaus was able to show that Osann s mistake was due to the impurity of the sample but Klaus was able to isolate the ruthenium metal and he retained Osann s original name of ruthenium. 

It was not until 1844 that Karl Karlovich Klaus (1796—1864), a well-known Russian (Estonian) scientist of the day, separated enough ruthenium from platinum to be able to correctly identify its properties. He is the person most sources credit as the discoverer of... 

In 1803 William Hyde Wollaston, a British physician who became famous for his research in metallurgy, mineralogy, and optics, succeeded in extracting a white metal from platinum. He named the new element palladium, after the asteroid Pallas, which had just been discovered the previous year. In the same year the English chemist Smithson Tennant obtained two new metals, which he named iridium and osmium, from platinum. And in 1828 the Russian chemist Karl Karlovich Klaus reported that he had obtained three new metals from platinum mined in the Urals. However, the existence of only one of them, which Klaus called ruthenium, was confirmed. 

Ruthenium was the last of the six platinum group metals to be isolated, and was discovered in Kazan (now capital of the Tatarstan Republic, Russian Federation) by Karl Karlovich Klaus (1796-1864) in 1844. The original papers were published in Russian journals which are difficult to obtain now, but were published in Western Europe in 1845 [1,2] with a summary in English [3]. Klaus made the metal by reduction of RuOj with H3 and named it Ruthenium in honour of his native land (Ruthenia, Latin for Russia) there are short biographies of him [4, 5],... 

The earliest scientific descriptions of platinum, are those of Dr. Brownrigg and Don Antonio de UUoa in the middle of the eighteenth century. Rhodium, palladium, osmium, and iridium were discovered in 1803 and 1804, the first two by Dr. Wollaston and the others by his friend, Smithson Tennant. Thomsons History of Chemistry and Berzelius correspondence and diary present a pleasing picture of these two great English chemists. Ruthenium, the Russian member of the platinum family, was discovered much later by Karl Karlovich Klaus, whose life story was beautifully told by Professor B. N Menschutkin of the Polytechnic Institute of Leningrad. 

Karl Karlovich Klaus spent his infancy and boyhood in a harsh, unkind environment. He was bom in the Baltic-Russian city of Dorpat on January 23, 1796. His father, a talented painter whose pictures later adorned Klaus s library, died in 1800. Soon after her husband s death the mother married another artist, and she, in turn, died when the boy was only five years old. Her second husband soon married again, and thus the little boy found himself a strange child in a strange home, left without affection and almost without care (36). 

Karl Karlovich Klaus, 1796-1864. Professor of pharmacy and chemistry at the Universities of Dorpat and Kazan. He was a great authority on the chemistry of the platinum metals. 

Menschutkin, B. N., Karl Karlovich Klaus, Ann inst. platine (Leningrad),... 

Jan. 23, 1796 Death of Don Antonio de Ulloa. Birth of Karl Karlovich Klaus, the discoverer of ruthenium, at Dorpat, Estonia. 

In 1854, Carl Ernst Claus (1796-1864), a professor of Chemistry at the University of Kazan and the discoverer of ruthenium (also known by the Russian name of Karl Karlovich Klaus), rejected the ammonium theory and proposed a return to Berzelius view of complexes as conjugated compounds. He compared the platinum-ammines with metal oxides, rather than with ammonium salts or ammonium hydroxide. He called the coordinated ammonia molecule passive, in contrast to the active, alkaline state in the ammonium salts, where it can easily be detected and replaced by other bases . 

Finally, in 1844, Russian chemist Carl Ernst Claus (also known as Karl Karlovich Klaus 1796—1864) gave positive proof of a new element in platinum ores. Many authorities now call Claus the discoverer of the element. Claus suggested calling the element ruthenium, after the ancient name of Russia, Ruthenia. Osann had suggested that name as well. 

The name comes from Ruthenia, Latin for Russia. In 1840, Karl Karlovich Klaus (1796-1864) started an investigation to settle a dispute between Gottfried Wilhelm Osann (1797-1866) and Jons Jakob Berzelius (1779-1848) over the existence of new elements in residue from platinum ore found in the Ural Mountains. In 1844, Klaus identified and named the new element. Small quantities of ruthenium are found in platinum and nickel ores. It is used primarily as a catalyst and a hardening alloy for platinum products. 

History. Ruthenium was first isolated as a metal in 1844 by the German chemist Karl Karlovich Klaus, who obtained ruthenium from the part of crude osmiridium that is insoluble in aqua regia. Nevertheless, it is possible that the Polish chemist Jedrzej A. Sniadecki had in fact isolated ruthenium from some platinum ores quite a bit earlier than this in 1807, but his work was not validated, apparently as he withdrew his claims. He called it vestium. 

Discovery Priority for a sixth platinum group element was claimed in 1809 by the Pole Sniadecki and in 1828 by Osann from Estonia. None of these discoveries was approved. In 1844 Karl Karlovich Klaus, Estonia, discovered a new metal in Russian platinum and named the new element ruthenium after Russia. 

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