BERZELIUS - THE DISCOVERY OF THORIUM.

Untersuchung eines neuen Minerals und einer darin enthaltenen zuvor unbekannten Erde.

Leipzig, Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1829. Without wrappers as issued in "Annalen der Physik und Chemie. Hrsg.von Poggendorff", Bd. 16, Siebentes Stück. (2) + pp., 1 folded engraved plate. Entire issue offered with titlepage to volume 16. Berzelius's paper: pp. 387-415. Clean and fine.

First German printing - printed simultaneously with the English and Swedish version - of the paper in which Berzelius described his discovery of Thorium, the first element after Uranium to be identified as such.
In 1829, Jöns Jakob Berzelius of the Royal Karolinska Institute, Stockholm extracted thorium from a rock specimen sent to him by an amateur mineralogist who had discovered it near Brevig and realised that it had not previously been reported. The mineral turned out to be thorium silicate, and it is now known as thorite. Berzelius even produced a sample of metallic thorium by heating thorium fluoride with potassium, and confirmed it as a new metal. He called the black mineral thorite, in honor of the Scandinavian god Thor.

Parkinson "Breakthroughs", 1829 C.

Order-nr.: 49248