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Carl Auer von Welsbach: Chemist, Inventor, Entrepreneur pp 35–56Cite as

Didymium’s Twilight and Two New “Stars”

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Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science ((BRIESFHISTCHEM))

Abstract

Long experience in dealing with the rare earth elements and the difficulty of separating them one from the other made chemists aware of the pitfalls of claiming that they had succeeded in producing an unequivocally pure compound. Furthermore, the claimed discoveries turned out to be a tangled web of errors mixed with grains of truth as investigators tried to go over old ground, that is, to take another look at minerals once pronounced to be completely separated and analyzed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Wöhler asserted that Mosander had chosen the name because he had two sets of twins.

  2. 2.

    Marignac [1].

  3. 3.

    Bunsen [2].

  4. 4.

    Bunsen [3].

  5. 5.

    Note: With the exception of didymium, the names of elements that are not now present nor ever were present in the periodic table are rendered in italics.

  6. 6.

    This could mean either “deceived” or “disappointed.” Delafontaine was both.

  7. 7.

    Delafontaine [4].

  8. 8.

    Delafontaine [5].

  9. 9.

    Although in the separation later carried out by Auer, he does not mention a blue band as indicative of either praseodymium and neodymium.

  10. 10.

    Cleve [6].

  11. 11.

    Brauner [7].

  12. 12.

    Abstracts in J Am Chem Soc (1882), 4:240. Remarks on Didymium. By P. T. Cleve. (No. 1, July 3d, 1882.) In a preliminary note the author suggested the existence of a new element which he named Beta-Didymium, but further experiments have shown the non-existence of this new element.

  13. 13.

    Abstracts in J Am Chem Soc (1882), 4:240. On Didymium. By B. Brauner. No. 26. (June 26, 1882). Ordinary didymium is a mixture of three elements-didymium, beta-didymium and perhaps samarium.

  14. 14.

    Bohuslav Brauner was a Bohemian chemist who spent almost his entire career at Charles University in Prague. A student in Robert Bunsen’s laboratory from 1878 to 1879, he conceived there a lifelong interest in the rare earth elements. He was particularly observant regarding missing elements and proposed that one lay hidden between neodymium and samarium. He also was the first to propose that all of the rare earths should be placed in the same box in the periodic table since there did not seem to be any other room for them given their chemical similarities.

  15. 15.

    Goldschmidt [8]. Fractional crystallization is a method of separating two or more substances whose properties are so similar that the classical chemical methods are useless. The evaporation of a solution containing their compounds gives rise to mixed crystals; however, the proportion of the two elements in these crystals is different from those in the mother liquor, so that it is possible to separate one from the other by successive operations.

  16. 16.

    Auer von Welsbach [9].

  17. 17.

    Auer von Welsbach [10].

  18. 18.

    Auer von Welsbach [11].

  19. 19.

    Langmuir [12].

  20. 20.

    No additional elements were ever found even though thoroughly searched for by Auer himself.

  21. 21.

    Auer von Welsbach [13].

  22. 22.

    Auer von Welsbach [14].

  23. 23.

    Auer von Welsbach [15].

  24. 24.

    Aldebaran is a near-first magnitude star located in the constellation Taurus, about 65 light years from the sun; Cassiopeia is a constellation in the northern sky.

  25. 25.

    Exner and Haschek [16].

  26. 26.

    Thalén [17].

  27. 27.

    Eder and Valenta [18].

  28. 28.

    Kragh [19].

  29. 29.

    Kragh [20]. This reference, and the preceding one, are invaluable for following the intricacies of the priority disputes to be discussed in summary below. The authors owe a great deal to the scholarship evidenced by Prof. Kragh in telling this complicated tale.

  30. 30.

    Urbain [21].

  31. 31.

    In actual fact, today’s value for ytterbium is 173.04 and the value for lutetium is 174.967; Urbain’s error factor for ytterbium almost exceeded three atomic weight units!.

  32. 32.

    Urbain [22].

  33. 33.

    Units were never given either for atomic weights nor for spectral lines and bands. One assumes that in the table presented the units are in Ängstroms.

  34. 34.

    Auer von Welsbach [23].

  35. 35.

    Clark et al. [24].

  36. 36.

    Kragh [25].

  37. 37.

    Fontani et al. [26].

  38. 38.

    Auer von Welsbach [27].

  39. 39.

    Element 61 took on many names, among them florentium, illinium, and cyclonium

  40. 40.

    Marinsky et al. [28].

  41. 41.

    Marinsky [29].

  42. 42.

    Urbain [30].

  43. 43.

    Urbain [31].

  44. 44.

    Szabadvary F. Discovery and separation of the rare earths. In Gschneider and Eyring [32].

  45. 45.

    Coster and Hevesy [33].

  46. 46.

    Urbain [34], written when Brauner retired from an active scientific life.

  47. 47.

    Štrbáňová [35]. The author comments: “Priority disputes represent in history of science an intriguing phenomenon. If at all, only primary sources can give us relevant answers about the individual cases, but their interpretation deserves deeper historical analysis.”

  48. 48.

    Kragh [36].

  49. 49.

    Even though Brauner and Auer worked in Robert Bunsen’s laboratory they probably had never met since their terms there did not oveerlap. In 1883, while Auer was still working with Bunsen, Brauner came for a visit, but claimed that while he was there, Auer did not “present himself.” (Letter from B. Brauner to M. Speter, 18 May 1933). Reproduced from [37].

  50. 50.

    This was the German equivalent of the International Committee on Chemical Elements set up independently after World War I because of the Allies’ policy that excluded any nation from the former central powers, from sitting on the International Commission.

  51. 51.

    Deutsche Atomgewichts-Kommission [38].

  52. 52.

    Pohl [39].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Auer von Welsbach-Museum, Althofen, Kärnten, Austria

    Roland Adunka

  2. Department of Chemistry, College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY, USA

    Mary Virginia Orna

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  1. Roland Adunka
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Adunka, R., Orna, M.V. (2018). Didymium’s Twilight and Two New “Stars”. In: Carl Auer von Welsbach: Chemist, Inventor, Entrepreneur. SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77905-8_4

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