The Discovery of Elements

Hennig Brand

1669

Hennig Brand was an alchemist trying to discover a way to produce gold from other metals. He was unsuccessful in doing so, however, through that experiment he discovered Phosphorus.

Henry Cavendish

1754

Henry Cavendish was the chemist who discovered Hydrogen. Through this finding, he discovered that elements were not just solid or liquids, but could be gases too.

Daniel Rutherford

1772

Daniel Rutherford was a British scientist who discovered Nitrogen.

Joseph Priestly

1772

Joseph Priestly was a chemist who made many discoveries, including nine new "airs" and the invention of carbonated water. But he is most known for his unearthing of dephlogisticated air or "oxygen" as the name was later coined by another chemist.

Antoine Lavoisier

1772

Antoine Lavoisier was a French chemist who made remarkable contributions to chemistry, including one where he took Joseph Priestly's discovery of "dephlogistical air" and presented it as the "more breathable air" which he named oxygen. He went on to discover that elements didn't lose mass from rusting, but gained more mass from oxygen. In 1789 he wrote his textbook "Traité Élémentaire de Chimie" which included his dismantling of the phlogiston theory.

Humphry Davy

1807

Humphry Davy was the chemist who discovered potassium and sodium in 1807. A year later he used electricity to isolate four more elements: barium, calcium, magnesium and strontium. He experimented with nitrous oxide, which was discovered by Joseph Priestly in 1772. Davy tested the nitrous oxide (or laughing gas as we know it today) to discover its relaxing and euphoric abilities.