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What
the name means:
The word bromine derives from the Greek
word, bromos which means “stink” or
“bad smell”.
Who
identified
bromine? In 1826,
a French chemist called Antoine-Jéröme
Balard identified a new substance extracted
from the fronds of Fucus, a brown
seaweed. At first he thought that it must
be a compound of either chlorine or iodine.
However, he soon realised that he had
identified a new element with similar
properties to chlorine and iodine. He
called his new element muride, after the
Latin word, muria meaning salt
water. Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac of the
French Academy of Science established the
name bromine for the element on account of
its pungent odour. It so happened that a
young chemist in Germany, Carl Löwig, had
been the first to identify bromine one year
before Balard, in 1825. Unfortunately,
Löwig was a student with exams to revise
for and he did not have the time to publish
his work, which is why he is not given
credit for the identification.
About
bromine: Bromine
belongs to the group of elements known as
the halogens. The word halogen literally
means “forming a salt”. |
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