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What the name
means: Gallium is named after the
Latin word for France, Gallia.
Who identified
gallium? A Frenchman named Paul
Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran used a procedure
called spectroscopy on a rock sample from a
mine in the Pyrenees. Spectroscopy is used
to take photographs of the light either
given out by or taken in by elements. In
1875, Boisbaudran identified a new light
pattern that he concluded must belong to a
new element. Dmitri Mendeleev, in 1871, had
predicted from his periodic table that
there must be an element at number 31, in
the same vertical group as aluminium.
Boisbaudran found that the spectrum of the
new element was similar to both aluminium
and boron, and concluded that this was the
missing element. He called the element
gallium after his home country, France.
(There was a suspicion, which Boisbaudran
himself denied, that he called the element
Gallium after the Latin for cock which is
gallus. Cock is le coq in
French so there were those who suggested
that he called the element after himself!)
About
gallium: Gallium is extremely rare
in the Earth’s crust. It is never found as
the free element. Since it easily forms
alloys with other metals, it is often found
in very small amounts associated with
aluminium and zinc compounds. It can be
extracted to give a soft, silvery metal
that is used for such things as adding
brilliance to mirrors and to make useful
alloys. |
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