Who discovered lanthanum?
17744#11
In 1751, the Swedish mineralogist Axel Fredrik Cronstedt discovered a heavy mineral from the mine at Bastnäs, later named cerite. Thirty years later, the fifteen-year-old Vilhelm Hisinger, from the family owning the mine, sent a sample of it to Carl Scheele, who did not find any new elements within. In 1803, after Hisinger had become an ironmaster, he returned to the mineral with Jöns Jacob Berzelius and isolated a new oxide which they named "ceria" after the dwarf planet Ceres, which had been discovered two years earlier. Ceria was simultaneously independently isolated in Germany by Martin Heinrich Klaproth. Between 1839 and 1843, ceria was shown to be a mixture of oxides by the Swedish surgeon and chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander, who lived in the same house as Berzelius: he separated out two other oxides which he named "lanthana" and "didymia". He partially decomposed a sample of cerium nitrate by roasting it in air and then treating the resulting oxide with dilute nitric acid. Since lanthanum's properties differed only slightly from those of cerium, and occurred along with it in its salts, he named it from the Ancient Greek "λανθάνειν" [lanthanein] (lit. "to lie hidden"). Relatively pure lanthanum metal was first isolated in 1923.
Lanthanum
2700960#3
Several elements were discovered as a consequence of lengthy analysis and decomposition of the ore Gadolinite. As the ore was progressively analysed, the residue was first given the label ceria and then lanthana and then subsequently yttria, erbia, and terbia. In order of date discovered, the list of elements includes Cerium 58, Lanthanum 57, Erbium 68, Terbium 65, Yttrium 39, Ytterbium 70, Holmium 67, Thulium 69, Scandium 21, Praseodymium 59, Neodymium 60 and Dysprosium 66. Several of these new elements were either discovered or isolated by Carl Gustaf Mosander in the 1830s and 1840s.
Lanthanum oxide
17744#1
Lanthanum usually occurs together with cerium and the other rare earth elements. Lanthanum was first found by the Swedish chemist Carl Gustav Mosander in 1839 as an impurity in cerium nitrate – hence the name "lanthanum", from the Ancient Greek "λανθάνειν" ("lanthanein"), meaning "to lie hidden". Although it is classified as a rare earth element, lanthanum is the 28th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, almost three times as abundant as lead. In minerals such as monazite and bastnäsite, lanthanum composes about a quarter of the lanthanide content. It is extracted from those minerals by a process of such complexity that pure lanthanum metal was not isolated until 1923.
Lanthanum
181556#11
Lanthanum usually occurs together with cerium and the other rare earth elements. Lanthanum was first found by the Swedish chemist Carl Gustav Mosander in 1839 as an impurity in cerium nitrate – hence the name "lanthanum", from the Ancient Greek "λανθάνειν" ("lanthanein"), meaning "to lie hidden". Although it is classified as a rare earth element, lanthanum is the 28th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, almost three times as abundant as lead. In minerals such as monazite and bastnäsite, lanthanum composes about a quarter of the lanthanide content. It is extracted from those minerals by a process of such complexity that pure lanthanum metal was not isolated until 1923.
Period 6 element
840853#2
Mosander worked teaching chemistry at the Institute and as an assistant in the mineralogical collection of the Swedish Museum of Natural History. In 1836 he succeeded his professor of chemistry during his medical studies, Jöns Jakob Berzelius, as professor of chemistry and pharmacy in the Karolinska Institute. Mosander discovered lanthanum in 1839 when he partially decomposed a sample of cerium nitrate by heating and treating the resulting salt with dilute nitric acid. In 1843 he discovered terbium and erbium.
Carl Gustaf Mosander
2308#12
Actinium was discovered in 1899 by André-Louis Debierne, an assistant of Marie Curie, in the pitchblende waste left after removal of radium and polonium. He described the substance (in 1899) as similar to titanium and (in 1900) as similar to thorium. The discovery of actinium by Debierne was however questioned in 1971 and 2000, arguing that Debierne's publications in 1904 contradicted his earlier work of 1899–1900. This view instead credits the 1902 work of Friedrich Oskar Giesel, who discovered a radioactive element named "emanium" that behaved similarly to lanthanum. The name actinium comes from the Greek "aktis, aktinos" (ακτίς, ακτίνος), meaning beam or ray. This metal was discovered not by its own radiation but by the radiation of the daughter products. Owing to the close similarity of actinium and lanthanum and low abundance, pure actinium could only be produced in 1950. The term actinide was probably introduced by Victor Goldschmidt in 1937.
Actinide
24693669#0
Lanthanum barium copper oxide, or LBCO, was discovered in 1986 and was the first high temperature superconductor. Johannes Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Müller shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in physics for its discovery.
Lanthanum barium copper oxide
1929545#13
In 1986, J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Mueller discovered superconductivity in a lanthanum-based cuprate perovskite material, which had a transition temperature of 35 K (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1987) and was the first of the high-temperature superconductors. It was shortly found (by Ching-Wu Chu) that replacing the lanthanum with yttrium, i.e. making YBCO, raised the critical temperature to 92 K, which was important because liquid nitrogen could then be used as a refrigerant (at atmospheric pressure, the boiling point of nitrogen is 77 K). This is important commercially because liquid nitrogen can be produced cheaply on-site with no raw materials, and is not prone to some of the problems (solid air plugs, etc.) of helium in piping. Many other cuprate superconductors have since been discovered, and the theory of superconductivity in these materials is one of the major outstanding challenges of theoretical condensed-matter physics.
History of superconductivity
17744#0
Lanthanum is a chemical element with symbol La and atomic number 57. It is a soft, ductile, silvery-white metal that tarnishes rapidly when exposed to air and is soft enough to be cut with a knife. It is the eponym of the lanthanide series, a group of 15 similar elements between lanthanum and lutetium in the periodic table, of which lanthanum is the first and the prototype. It is also sometimes considered the first element of the 6th-period transition metals, which would put it in group 3, although lutetium is sometimes placed in this position instead. Lanthanum is traditionally counted among the rare earth elements. The usual oxidation state is +3. Lanthanum has no biological role in humans but is essential to some bacteria. It is not particularly toxic to humans but does show some antimicrobial activity.
Lanthanum
17744#17
The first historical application of lanthanum was in gas lantern mantles. Carl Auer von Welsbach used a mixture of 60% magnesium oxide, 20% lanthanum oxide, and 20% yttrium oxide, which he called "Actinophor" and patented in 1885. The original mantles gave a green-tinted light and were not very successful, and his first company, which established a factory in Atzgersdorf in 1887, failed in 1889.
Lanthanum