Discovery Of Niobium

Charles HatchettIn 1801, the British chemist Charles Hatchett discovered niobium in a sample of an ore in the British Museum that had been sent to him in 1734 by John Winthrop of Connecticut, USA. Since niobium and tantalum are very similar, at first he thought they were the same substance. However, he later discovered that the compounds isolated from this mineral were not chromic acid but oxides of unknown metals. Since the mineral came from the United States, where Columbus discovered it, Hatchett named the ore Columbite in honor of its origin. In fact, because the two elements are so similar in nature, many people believe they are the same element. 1809, another British chemist, William Hyde Wollaston, incorrectly categorized "tantalum" and "columbium" as the same substance, believing that they were identical in all respects except density. In 1846, the German chemist

In 1846, the German chemist Heinrich Rose analyzed different tantalum and coltan ores, and found that there was another element besides tantalum, which was very close to tantalum, and called this new element Niobium (Niobium is taken from the Greek mythological character Niobe, as tantalum's name comes from the Greek mythological character Tantalos, and niobium from the Greek mythological character Tantalos. (Niobium was taken from the Greek mythological character Niobe, since tantalum was named after the Greek mythological figure of Tantalos, and Niobe was the daughter of Tantalos, which emphasized the similarity between tantalum and niobium). 1864-1865 also saw the results of scientific research that showed that columbium and niobium were the same element, and the two designations were commonly used in the following century. 1864 saw the first demonstration of the similarity between columbium and niobium by Swiss chemist Wilhelm In 1864, the Swiss chemist Wilhelm Blomstrand first obtained niobium by reducing chloride with hydrogen, and in 1951 the Nomenclature Committee of the International Association of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) decided to adopt niobium as the official name of the element.