The Discovery and Demise of Wodanium

doi:10.1515/ci-2015-0419

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The Discovery and Demise of Wodanium

Published/Copyright: July 2, 2015

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From the journal Chemistry International Volume 37 Issue 4

What do the English potter Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795), the Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander (1797-1858), and the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) have in common? These accomplished individuals share the dubious honor of having made claims of discovery for spurious elements, i.e., those subsequently found to be known chemical elements, compounds, or a combination thereof. In fact, the chemical literature of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century literally contains dozens of such erroneous discoveries, often spurred by the limitations of the analytical methods available at the time. Even the legendary Berzelius, who referred to these scientific mishaps as still-born elements, had a couple of misses, including his alleged isolation of gahnium (1803), a substance later proven to be zinc oxide.

The stamp triptych illustrated in this note was issued in Germany in 1991 on the occasion of the 18th World Gas Congress in Berlin. It features the German chemist and metallurgist Wilhelm August Lampadius (1772-1842), best known for his discovery of carbon disulfide (1796) and his contributions to the production of illuminating gas for street lamps. In 1818, while at the renowned Freiberg Academy of Mines, Lampadius proclaimed that he had discovered a new metal that accounted for approximately 20% of the weight of a cobalt ore sample from the Topschau mine in Hungary. He named the purported new element wodanium after Wodan, the Germanic god of the sky and war, and, interestingly, also the namesake for the English-language day of the week Wednesday.

The existence of wodanium, however, was short-lived. Less than two years later, in March of 1820, Friedrich Stromeyer (1776-1835), a professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the University of Göttingen and the discoverer of cadmium, presented to the local Royal Academy a careful analysis of a specimen of the same Hungarian mineral ore used by Lampadius to extract wodanium. He found that the sample consisted of about 16% nickel, 4% cobalt, 11% iron, 56% arsenic, 11% sulfur, and trace amounts of manganese, copper, lead and antimony, but no detectable amounts of any unknown elements. Evidently, in the business of discovering chemical elements as in competitive sports, you win some, you lose some....

For a fascinating and thorough account of hundreds of elements found and lost, see Fontani, M.; Costa, M.; Orna, M. V. The Lost Elements; Oxford University Press: New York, 2015.

Written by Daniel Rabinovich <drabinov@uncc.edu>.

Online erschienen: 2015-7-2

Erschienen im Druck: 2015-7-1

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https://doi.org/10.1515/ci-2015-0419