Ravindra Vaze

Exactly a hundred years ago, the last naturally occurring stable element to be discovered was Rhenium. This discovery was not accidental but involved an arduous search for minerals containing it, followed by a number of extractions and analyses. A systematic and coherent search for elements truly began with the discovery of the periodic table by the Russian chemist Dimitri Mendeleev in 1896. He placed the then-known element Manganese (Mn) in group 7 and left two gaps below it. He predicted new elements to fill these gaps and temporarily named them as Eka-manganese (Em) and Dvi-manganese (Dm). Later on, these gaps were filled with the discovery of elements Technetium (Tc) and Rhenium (Re). Out of these two elements, Rhenium was the first to be discovered in June 1925 by Walter Noddack, Ida Tacke (later Ida Noddack), and Otto Berg in Germany. The German discoverers named the element Rhenium after Rhenus, the Latin name for the river Rhine in Germany. The river flowed in the vicinity of their workplace. It would be worthwhile to have an overview of the historical development that led to the discovery of the element…read more on NOPR