As there are six kinds of metals, so I have also shown with reliable experiments… that there are also six kinds of half-metals. I through my experiments, had the good fortune … to be the discoverer of a new half-metal, namely cobalt regulus, which had formerly been confused with bismuth.
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Georg Brandt was a Swedish chemist and mineralogist who discovered cobalt c. 1735. He was the first person to discover a metal unknown in ancient times.
Biography
Brandt was born in Riddarhyttan, Skinnskatteberg parish, Västmanland to Jurgen Brandt, a mineowner and pharmacist, and Katarina Ysing. He was professor of chemistry at Uppsala University, and died in Stockholm. He was able to show that cobalt was the source of the blue color in glass, which previously had been attributed to the bismuth found with cobalt. He died on April 29, 1768 of prostate cancer.
About 1741 he wrote: "As there are six kinds of metals, so I have also shown with reliable experiments... that there are also six kinds of half-metals: a new half-metal, namely Cobalt regulus in addition to Mercury, Bismuth, Zinc, and the reguluses of Antimony and Arsenic". He gave six ways to distinguish bismuth and cobalt which were typically found in the same ores:
- Bismuth fractures while Cobalt is more like a true metal.
- The regulus of Shetz fuses with flint and fixed alkali giving a blue glass known as zaffera, sasre, or smalt. Bismuth does not.
- Bismuth melts easily and if kept melted, calcinates forming a yellow powder.
- Bismuth amalgamates with Mercury; the regulus of Cobalt does not at all.
- Bismuth dissolved in nitric acid and with aqua regia and gives a white precipitate when put in pure water. The regulus of Cobalt needs alkalies to precipitate, and then forms dark or black precipitates.
Top questions
Who was Georg Brandt?
Georg Brandt was a Swedish chemist, born on 26 June 1694 in Riddarhyttan, the son of a mine owner and pharmacist. He studied medicine and chemistry in Uppsala and the Netherlands, rose to direct Sweden's Bureau of Mines, and discovered cobalt, the first new metallic element identified since antiquity. He died in Stockholm in 1768.
What did Georg Brandt discover?
Brandt discovered cobalt. Through careful experiments isolating, smelting and analyzing the troublesome Kobold ore, he demonstrated between 1730 and 1737 that it contained an entirely new metallic substance. It was the first new metallic element identified since antiquity and challenged the ancient assumption that only seven metals existed.
How did cobalt get its name?
Cobalt takes its name from Kobold, the miners' word for an ore, itself a term from German folklore for an underground spirit or goblin. Miners hated the ore because it looked as if it should yield silver but produced nothing useful and emitted toxic fumes when smelted. Georg Brandt named the new metal he found in it cobalt.
How did Georg Brandt debunk alchemy?
Brandt subjected many alchemical claims to rigorous experimental scrutiny and exposed them as false. He showed that the supposed transmutation of base metals into gold came from wishful thinking, impure samples and deliberate deception. This work helped establish chemistry as a discipline separate from alchemy, grounded in experiment, reproducibility and honest reporting of results.
Why did Georg Brandt become interested in minerals and metals?
Brandt was the son of a mine owner and pharmacist and grew up surrounded by mining operations, which shaped his lifelong interest in mineralogy and metallurgy. Sweden in the early eighteenth century was one of Europe's most important mining centers, producing copper, iron and silver, so Swedish chemists were at the forefront of mineralogical research.
What is Georg Brandt's legacy?
Brandt died on 29 April 1768 in Stockholm, aged seventy-three, having advanced the rigor and precision of chemical science. Cobalt is now of enormous industrial importance, essential in lithium-ion batteries, high-temperature alloys and magnetic materials, and its blue pigment has long been used in ceramics and glass. His rigorous investigation of it introduced standards of chemical proof.
