Gottfried Wilhelm Osann (26 October 1796,

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

– 10 August 1866,

Würzburg Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is a city in the region of Franconia in the north of the German state of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the ''Regierungsbezirk'' Lower Franconia. It spans the banks of the Main River. Würzburg ...

) was a German chemist and physicist. He is known for his work on the chemistry of

platinum Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish , a diminutive of "silver". Pla ...

metals. He studied natural sciences and became a ''

privatdozent ''Privatdozent'' (for men) or ''Privatdozentin'' (for women), abbreviated PD, P.D. or Priv.-Doz., is an academic title conferred at some European universities, especially in German-speaking countries, to someone who holds certain formal qualific ...

'' in physics and chemistry at the

University of Erlangen A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

in 1819. Between 1821 and 1823, he occupied the same position at the

University of Jena The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (german: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. The ...

. He taught chemistry and medicine at the

University of Dorpat The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...

(

Dorpat Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of ...

Governorate of Livonia The Governorate of Livonia, also known as the Livonia Governorate, was a Baltic governorate of the Russian Empire, now divided between Latvia and Estonia. Geography The shape of the province is a fairly rectangular in shape, with a maximum ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

; today

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of ...

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...

) from 1823 to 1828, from 1828 at the

University of Würzburg The Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (also referred to as the University of Würzburg, in German ''Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg'') is a public research university in Würzburg, Germany. The University of Würzburg is one of ...

. A collaboration with Jöns Jakob Berzelius nearly led to the discovery of

ruthenium Ruthenium is a chemical element with the symbol Ru and atomic number 44. It is a rare transition metal belonging to the platinum group of the periodic table. Like the other metals of the platinum group, ruthenium is inert to most other chemical ...

in 1828. They dissolved platinum ore from the

Ural mountains The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...

in aqua regia and sifted through the residue. Where Berzelius found nothing, Osann thought he had detected three new metals and named them pluranium (concatenation of ''platinum'' and ''Ural''), ruthenium (after

Ruthenia Ruthenia or , uk, Рутенія, translit=Rutenia or uk, Русь, translit=Rus, label=none, pl, Ruś, be, Рутэнія, Русь, russian: Рутения, Русь is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin as one of several terms ...

, the Latin name for Rus) and polinium (from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

word ''polia'', meaning grey-haired, for its residue color; not to be confused with

polonium Polonium is a chemical element with the symbol Po and atomic number 84. Polonium is a chalcogen. A rare and highly radioactive metal with no stable isotopes, polonium is chemically similar to selenium and tellurium, though its metallic character ...

, discovered later). However, the quantity of the metals was too small to isolate, and Osann eventually withdrew his discovery claims. It was up to the Russian chemist Karl Klaus to verify their existence, which he did in 1844 by isolating measurable quantities of ruthenium. For this reason, Klaus is usually named as the discoverer of ruthenium rather than Osann. He was the brother of balneologist

Emil Osann Emil Osann (May 25, 1787 – January 11, 1842) was a German physician and physiologist from Weimar. He was a founder of scientific balneology. He was the brother of philologist Friedrich Gotthilf Osann (1794-1858) and chemist Gottfried Osann (179 ...

(1787-1842) and

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined ...

Friedrich Gotthilf Osann Friedrich Gotthilf Osann (August 22, 1794, in Weimar – 30 November 1858, in Giessen) was a German classical philologist. He was a brother to physician Emil Osann (1787–1842) and chemist Gottfried Osann (1796–1866). He received ...

(1794-1858).Goethes Gespräche. Zeno.org
Herausgegeben von Woldemar Freiherr von Biedermann, Band 1–10, Leipzig 1889–1896, Band 10.

Notes

External links

Gottfried Wilhelm Osann at ''Bayerische Staatsbibliothek''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Osann, Gottfried Wilhelm 1796 births 1866 deaths 19th-century German chemists 19th-century German physicists Scientists from Weimar