Georg Brandt (26 June 1694 – 29 April 1768) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe t ...

and

mineralogist Mineralogy is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical) properties of minerals and mineralized artifacts. Specific studies within mineralogy include the proce ...

who discovered

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, p ...

(c. 1735). He was the first person to discover a metal unknown in ancient times. He is also known for exposing fraudulent

alchemists Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...

operating during his lifetime.

Biography

Brandt was born in Riddarhyttan,

Skinnskatteberg Skinnskatteberg () is a locality and the seat of Skinnskatteberg Municipality in Västmanland County Västmanland County ( sv, Västmanlands län) is a county or ''län'' in central Sweden. It borders the counties of Södermanland, Örebro, ...

parish,

Västmanland Västmanland ( or ), is a historical Swedish province, or ''landskap'', in middle Sweden. It borders Södermanland, Närke, Värmland, Dalarna and Uppland. Västmanland means "(The) Land of the Western Men", where the "western men" (''väst ...

to Jurgen Brandt, a mineowner and pharmacist, and Katarina Ysing. He was professor of chemistry at

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Located north of the c ...

University, and died in Stockholm. He was able to show that cobalt was the source of the blue color in glass, which previously had been attributed to the

bismuth Bismuth is a chemical element with the symbol Bi and atomic number 83. It is a post-transition metal and one of the pnictogens, with chemical properties resembling its lighter group 15 siblings arsenic and antimony. Elemental bismuth occurs ...

found with cobalt. He died on April 29, 1768, of prostate cancer. About 1741 he wrote: "As there are six kinds of metals, so I have also shown with reliable experiments... that there are also six kinds of half-metals: a new half-metal, namely Cobalt regulusRegulus: the more or less impure mass of metal formed beneath the slag during the smelting and reducing of ores.
Merriam-Webster dictionary
/ref> in addition to Mercury, Bismuth,

Zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

, and the reguluses of

Antimony Antimony is a chemical element with the symbol Sb (from la, stibium) and atomic number 51. A lustrous gray metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite (Sb2S3). Antimony compounds have been known since ancient t ...

and

Arsenic Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As and atomic number 33. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in combination with sulfur and metals, but also as a pure elemental crystal. Arsenic is a metalloid. It has various allotropes, ...

". He gave six ways to distinguish bismuth and cobalt which were typically found in the same

ore Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically containing metals, that can be mined, treated and sold at a profit.Encyclopædia Britannica. "Ore". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 7 Apr ...

s: #Bismuth fractures while Cobalt is more like a true metal. #The regulus of Shetz fuses with flint and fixed alkali giving a blue glass known as zaffera, sasre, or

smalt Cobalt glass—known as "smalt" when ground as a pigment—is a deep blue coloured glass prepared by including a cobalt compound, typically cobalt oxide or cobalt carbonate, in a glass melt. Cobalt is a very intense colouring agent and very litt ...

. Bismuth does not. #Bismuth melts easily and if kept melted, calcinates forming a yellow powder. #Bismuth amalgamates with Mercury; the regulus of Cobalt does not at all. #Bismuth dissolved in nitric acid and with aqua regia and gives a white precipitate when put in pure water. The regulus of Cobalt needs alkalies to precipitate, and then forms dark or black precipitates.

Notes

References

External links

Georg Brandt
by Uno Boklund in: Charles C. Gillispie, ed., ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography'' (New York, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), vol. 2, pages 421-422 {{DEFAULTSORT:Brandt, George 1694 births 1768 deaths People from Skinnskatteberg Municipality 18th-century Swedish chemists Swedish mineralogists Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Discoverers of chemical elements