Gallium - History

History

In 1871, existence of gallium was first predicted by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, who named it "eka-aluminium" on the basis of its position in his periodic table. He also predicted several properties of the element, which correspond closely to real gallium properties, such as density, melting point, oxide character and bonding in chloride.

Gallium was discovered spectroscopically by Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875 by its characteristic spectrum (two violet lines) in an examination of a sphalerite sample. Later that year, Lecoq obtained the free metal by electrolysis of its hydroxide in potassium hydroxide solution. He named the element "gallia", from Latin Gallia meaning Gaul, after his native land of France. It was later claimed that, in one of those multilingual puns so beloved of men of science in the 19th century, he had also named gallium after himself, as his name, "Le coq", is the French for "the rooster", and the Latin for "rooster" is "gallus"; however, in an 1877 article Lecoq denied this supposition. (Cf. the naming of the J/ψ meson and the dwarf planet Pluto.)

From its discovery in 1875 up to the era of semiconductors, its primary uses were in high-temperature thermometric applications and in preparation of metal alloys with unusual properties of stability, or ease of melting; some being liquid at room temperature or below. The development of gallium arsenide as a direct band gap semiconductor in the 1960s ushered in the most important stage in the applications of gallium.