Ruthenium - History

History

Though naturally occurring platinum alloys containing all six platinum group metals were used for a long time by pre-Columbian Americans and known as a material to European chemists from the mid-16th century, it took until the mid-18th century for platinum to be identified as a pure element. The discovery that natural platinum contained palladium, rhodium, osmium and iridium occurred in the first decade of the 19th century. Platinum in alluvial sands of Russian rivers gave access to raw material for use in plates and medals and for the minting of ruble coins, starting in 1828. Residues of platinum production for minting were available in the Russian Empire, and therefore most of the research on them was done in Eastern Europe.

It is possible that the Polish chemist Jędrzej Śniadecki isolated element 44 (which he called "vestium") from platinum ores in 1807. He published his discovery in Polish language in article "Rosprawa o nowym metallu w surowey platynie odkrytym" in 1808. His work was never confirmed, however, and he later withdrew his claim of discovery. Jöns Berzelius and Gottfried Osann nearly discovered ruthenium in 1827. They examined residues that were left after dissolving crude platinum from the Ural Mountains in aqua regia. Berzelius did not find any unusual metals, but Osann thought he found three new metals, pluranium, ruthenium and polinium. This discrepancy led to a long-standing controversy between Berzelius and Osann about the composition of the residues.

In 1844, the Baltic German scientist Karl Ernst Claus showed that the compounds prepared by Gottfried Osann contained small amounts of ruthenium, which Claus had discovered the same year. Claus isolated ruthenium from the platinum residues of the rouble production while he was working in Kazan University, Kazan. Claus showed that ruthenium oxide contained a new metal and obtained 6 grams of ruthenium from the part of crude platinum that is insoluble in aqua regia.

The name derives from Ruthenia, the Latin word for Rus', a historical area which includes present-day western Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Slovakia and Poland. Claus used the name proposed by Gottfried Osann in 1828. He chose the element's name in honor of his birthland, as he was born in Tartu, Estonia, which was at the time a part of the Russian Empire.