The Tantalum Metals (1801–1866): Nineteenth-Century Analytical Chemistry and the Identification of Chemical Elements (2022)
Hijmans, Sarah N. (Author)
Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Volume: 69
Issue: 4
Pages: 399-419
This paper examines the identification of chemical elements using mineral analysis, focusing on the controversy surrounding the “tantalum metals” between 1801 and 1866. Of these metals, only tantalum and niobium are still recognised as elements today; the discovery claims of columbium, pelopium, ilmenium and dianium were all retracted or refuted. Despite the theoretical and institutional changes that chemistry underwent during this time, the debates on the tantalum metals point towards a continuity in the identification of metals. For most of the nineteenth century, chemists continued to use the same types of analytical procedures as their mid-eighteenth-century predecessors. These analytical methods enabled the identification of metals based on the chemical behaviour of their compounds, without requiring their isolation in the form of simple substances (that is, as metals). Accordingly, the central questions in all of the debates on the tantalum metals were the correct identification of the properties of compounds and the elimination of impurities, rather than the simplicity of the new metals. The story of the tantalum metals therefore illustrates the fact that, despite the definition of chemical elements as simple substances, the discovery of new (metallic) elements only rarely coincided with the isolation of new simple substances.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Fors, Hjalmar;
(2015)
The Limits of Matter: Chemistry, Mining, and Enlightenment
(/isis/citation/CBB001510055/)
Article
Akeroyd, Michael;
(2010)
The Philosophical Significance of Mendeleev's Successful Predictions of the Properties of Gallium and Scandium
(/isis/citation/CBB001034532/)
Article
Ramírez-Solís, Alejandro;
Novaro, Octavio;
(2014)
The First Metals in Mendeleiev's Table: Further Arguments to Place He above Ne and Not above Be
(/isis/citation/CBB001420433/)
Chapter
Simon A. Cotton;
Carmen J. Giunta;
Vera V. Mainz;
Gregory S. Girolami;
(2021)
The Rare Earths, a Challenge to Mendeleev, No Less Today
(/isis/citation/CBB077239037/)
Article
Alfonso-Goldfarb, Ana Maria;
Ferraz, Marcia H. M.;
(2013)
Gur, Ghur, Guhr or Bur? The Quest for a Metalliferous Prime Matter in Early Modern Times
(/isis/citation/CBB001252456/)
Article
Vincenzo Carlotta;
Matteo Martelli;
(2023)
Metals as Living Bodies. Founts of Mercury, Amalgams, and Chrysocolla
(/isis/citation/CBB926056627/)
Article
Klein, Joel A.;
Ragland, Evan R.;
(2014)
Introduction: Analysis and Synthesis in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB001421662/)
Article
Bauer, Henry H.;
(2002)
“Pathological Science” Is Not Scientific Misconduct (Nor Is It Pathological)
(/isis/citation/CBB000200110/)
Article
Veljko Dragojlovic;
(2023)
First 60 Years of Melting Point in Organic Chemistry, 1790-1850
(/isis/citation/CBB729479208/)
Article
Aleta Quinn;
(2017)
Whewell on classification and consilience
(/isis/citation/CBB436109207/)
Article
Sarikaya, Mustafa;
(2013)
A View about the Short Histories of the Mole and Avogadro's Number
(/isis/citation/CBB001211808/)
Article
Evelyn Fox Keller;
(2016)
Active Matter, Then and Now
(/isis/citation/CBB303169325/)
Article
Rowlinson, J. S.;
(2010)
James Joule, William Thomson and the Concept of a Perfect Gas
(/isis/citation/CBB001022700/)
Article
Pryke, Kenneth;
(2011)
The Woolwich Arsenal and Acadian Mines
(/isis/citation/CBB001211533/)
Book
Norbert Kuhn;
Eberhard Schweda;
(2018)
Die Geschichte des Fachs Chemie an der Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
(/isis/citation/CBB088316190/)
Article
Kim, Mi Gyung;
(2014)
Stabilizing Chemical Reality: The Analytic-Synthetic Ideal of Chemical Species
(/isis/citation/CBB001421612/)
Article
Sutton, M.A.;
(1976)
Spectroscopy and the chemists: A neglected opportunity
(/isis/citation/CBB000016758/)
Article
James, Frank A. J. L.;
(1983)
The conservation of energy, theories of absorption, and resonating molecules, 1851-1854: G. G. Stokes, A. J. Ångström and W. Thomson
(/isis/citation/CBB000006874/)
Article
Bassani, Angelo;
(1997)
Il contributo di Girolamo Melandri Contessi allo sviluppo degli studi idrologici veneti
(/isis/citation/CBB000079415/)
Article
James, Frank A.J.L.;
(1988)
The practical problems of “new” experimental science: Spectro-chemistry and the search for hitherto unknown chemical elements in Britain, 1860-1869
(/isis/citation/CBB000045609/)
Be the first to comment!