June: The Isolation of Boron

The isolation of the element boron was announced by French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (pictured, right) with Louis-Jacques Thenard, nine days ahead of Englishman Humphry Davy who independently separated boron and made his announcement on 30 June 1808 (incidentally,   Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac was also only 11 days older than Humphry Davy). It should be noted that none of these three men actually identified Boron as an element at the time, this was done in 1824 by Jöns Jakob Berzelius.

 

Boron is used in a wide variety of products including automotive glass, optical fibres, plastics, glass ceramics, herbicides/pesticides, iron casting, electroplating, pharmaceuticals and washing powder amongst others.

 

Below are the bibliographic details of the publication of Gay-Lussac/Thenard and Davy's findings which are both in the RSCs historical collection:

• Gay-Lussac, J.-L. &   Thenard, L.-J. 1808, 'Sur la decomposition el la recomposition de l'acide boracique' Annales de Chimie, vol. 68, pp.169-74
• Davy, H. 1808, 'Electro-chemical researches on the decomposition of the earths; with observations on the metals obtained from the alkaline earths, and on the amalgam procured from ammonia', Philosophical   Transactions, vol. 98, p. 343

Also of interest on this topic is the following publication:

• 'Elements isolated with the aid of potassium and sodium' 1968, in M.E. Weeks & H.M. Leicester, Discovery of the Elements, Journal of Chemical Education, Easton, pp. 517-590