Tennant, Smithson

Tennant, Smithson (1761-1815) English chemist who proved by burning a diamond that it was a form of carbon and, while studying platinum for commercial purposes, isolated two new elements, iridium and osmium. 

Iridium (Ir, [Xe + 4/14]5r/9), name from the Latin word iris (rainbow iridium compounds are highly coloured). Discovered (1803) by the English chemist Smithson Tennant. 

Carbon - the atomic number is 6 and the chemical symbol is C. The name derives from the Latin carbo for charcoal . It was known in prehistoric times in the form of charcoal and soot. In 1797, the English chemist Smithson Tennant proved that diamond is pure carbon. 

Iridium - the atomic number is 77 and the chemical symbol is Ir. The name derives from the Latin Iris, the greek goddess of rainbows because of the variety of colors in the element s salt solutions . Iridium and osmium were both discovered in a crude platinum ore in 1803 by the English chemist Smithson Tennant. Iridium was discovered independently by the French chemist H. V. Collet-Descotils also in 1803. Descotils actually published one month before Tennant but Tennent is given credit for the discovery, perhaps because he alone also found osmium in the ore. 

Osmium - the atomic number is 76 and the chemical symbol is Os. The name derives from the Greek osme for smell because of the sharp odor of the volatile oxide. Both osmium and iridium were discovered simultaneously in a crude platinum ore by the English chemist Smithson Tennant in 1803. 

Osmium was discovered in 1803, at the same time as iridium, by Smithson Tennant (1761—1815). Several researchers, including Tennant, were curious about a black metallic... 

Iridium and its parmer osmium were discovered in 1803 by the Enghsh chemist Smithson Tennant (1761-1815). In essence, he employed the same technique to separate these elements from platinum ores that is used today to pmify iridium. He dissolved the minerals with aqua regia, which left a black residue that looked much like graphite. After analyzing this shiny black residue, he identified two new elements—Ir and Os. Tennant was responsible for naming iridium after the Latin word iris because of the element s rainbow of colors. 

Iridium Ir 1803 (London, England) Smithson Tennant (British) 159... 

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. 

British chemist Smithson Tennant Brittle metal found chiefly in ores also containing nickel and platinum its alloys used in manufacturing electrical contacts and fountain pen nibs. 

British chemist Smithson Tennant Among the hardest anticorrosive metals often found in ores of platinum and nickel added to platinum to enhance hardness. 

Iridium metal was detected in the black residue of aqua regia extract of platinum and identified as an element by British chemist Smithson Tennant in 1803. Around the same time, existence of this new metal was proposed by Vauquehn and deFourcroy in France in the course of their extraction of platinum by aqua regia. Tennant named this element Iridium after the Greek word, Iris, meaning rainbow. 

Osmium was discovered by English chemist Smithson Tennant in 1804. The element was named osmium after the Greek word, osme, which means a smell, because of the pungent and peculiar odor of its volatde oxide. 

In 1796 Smithson Tennant Droved that equal weights of carbon and diamond, when burned with saltpeter, yielded equal amounts of carbon dioxide (258, 265). Three years later Guyton de Morveau and Louis Clouet produced cast steel by heating a 907-milligram diamond in a small crucible of wrought iron (24, 258, 266). As early as 1704 Sir Isaac Newton stated in his Optics that the diamond must be combustible, and in 1772 Lavoisier found this to be true (23). The English chemist Smithson Tennant proved in 1796 that it consists solely of carbon (24). ... 

In 1805 James Soweiby received a piece of meteoric iron which Captain Barrow had found about two hundred miles within die Cape of Good Hope. When Smithson Tennant analyzed it, he found about 10 per cent of nickel in it. Mr. Sowerby had the metal hammered into a sword, which he presented to tire Emperor of Russia (128). 

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. 

Smithson Tennant had a most kind and forgiving nature. When a dishonest steward on his estate, who had become so heavily in debt that Tennant was obliged to examine the accounts, committed suicide, Tennant not only excused the unfortunate family from the payment of the debt, but assisted them financially in the kindest possible manner (14). 

In 1805 Dr. Wollaston published in the Philosophical Transactions an account of an ore of iridium intermixed with grams of crude platinum, which could be dissolved out with aqua regia. In the insoluble portion of the ore he found only iridium and osmium. Although Smithson Tennant was prevented by his fatal accident from analyzing the mineral specimen which Wollaston gave him, Thomas Thomson analyzed it in 1826 and found it to consist of iridium, osmium, and a small amount of iron (127). 

Discovery of two new metals in crude platma by Smithson Tennant, Esq,... 

Dr. Alexandre Marcet stated that Smithson Tennant discovered the presence of iodine in sea water just before his fatal accident in 1815 (128). In his famous research on the composition of sea water, J. G. Forchhammer stated that iodine was the first element in sea water dis-... 

Birth of Smithson Tennant, the discoverer of osmium and iridium, at Wensleydale, Yorkshire. 

Smithson Tennant proves that the diamond consists solely of carbon. 

Feb. 6, 1804 1804 Oct. 6, 1807 Wollaston discovers palladium and rhodium. Death of Priestley at Northumberland, Pa. Smithson Tennant discovers osmium and iridium. Davy isolates potassium. A few days later he isolates sodium. 

It did truly look like silver. Furthermore, it was malleable enough to be made into jewellery, and resisted the corrosion that gradually turned real silver black. In this respect palladium closely resembles platinum, which sits below it in the Periodic Table. It is in fact one of the so-called platinum-group metals, all of which were found lurking in natural platinum around the turn of the nineteenth century by Wollaston and his colleague Smithson Tennant. ... 

Proof that diamond is on allatropic form of carbon was given by lhc English chemist. Smithson Tennant, in 1797. 

The four metals rhodium, palladium, osmium and iridium, share the same centennial and have been dealt with together.147-149 Wollaston separated palladium from platinum ore in 1803 but concealed the identity of the metal until 1804.150 Osmium was isolated from crude platinum by Smithson Tennant in 1804.151 There are accounts of the discoveries of niobium (by Hatchett)152 and ruthenium.153,154... 

Since osmium was first isolated as the tetroxide, one of its most important and celebrated coordination complexes, a brief account of the history of its coordination chemistry is not out of place. The tetroxide, and subsequently the metal, was first isolated in 1803 by Smithson Tennant1 (1761-1815) by distillation with nitric acid of the black material derived after aqua regia treatment of platinum metal concentrates. Of the tetroxide Tennant wrote ... 

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