|
What the name
means: Vanadium derives from one of
the names of the Norse goddess of beauty,
Vanadis. It was so named because its
compounds are so colourful.
Who identified
vanadium? It was a Spaniard called
Andrès Manuel de Rio who first identified a
new element in a brown ore when he was
working in Mexico in 1801. He called this
new element erythronium, from the Greek
word erythros meaning red.
Unfortunately, de Rio was unsure of his
discovery and thought that it could be a
lead-containing mineral. When a French
scientist called Hippolyte Victor
Collet-Descotils concluded that the brown
ore was red lead, de Rio with drew his
original claim.
Thirty years later, in
1831, Nils Gabriel Sefström found a new ore
in a Swedish mine. He teamed up with Jöns
Jakob Berzelius and they identified what
they thought was an as yet undiscovered
element. They named this new element
Vanadium. However, later in the same year,
Friedrich Wöhler proved that de Rio’s
erythronium and Vanadium were, in fact, the
same element.
Vanadium was eventually
isolated in 1867 by the Englishman Sir
Henry Enfield Roscoe, who was a student of
Robert Bunsen.
About vanadium:
Vanadium is a silvery grey metal
that is extremely resistant to corrosion.
It is never found as the free element in nature.
However, its compounds are quite common and
can be found in over 65 different minerals.
Vanadium is also present in crude oil and
has been detected in the light spectra from
the sun and other stars. |
The Open Door Web Site 
