Adolf Patera (11 July 1819, in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

– 26 June 1894), was a Bohemian chemist, mineralogist and metallurgist, best known for the important role he played in the utilisation of

uranium Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...

in colour production in glass, and associated with silver extraction from the mines at Joachimsthal, then part of the

Austro-Hungarian Empire Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consist ...

, now known as Jáchymov. ''Pateraite'', supposedly a

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), 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. ...

molybdate In chemistry, a molybdate is a compound containing an oxyanion with molybdenum in its highest oxidation state of +6: . Molybdenum can form a very large range of such oxyanions, which can be discrete structures or polymeric extended structures, ...

, is named after him. Patera studied at the Academy in

Banská Štiavnica Banská Štiavnica (; ; , ) is a town in central Slovakia, in the middle of an immense caldera created by the collapse of an ancient volcano. For its size, the caldera is known as the Štiavnica Mountains. Banská Štiavnica has a population of ...

between 1839 and 1843. Toward the mid-19th century the rich silver ore of Joachimsthal had been almost exhausted and instead miners encountered a heavy black mineral which they named " Pechblende".

Martin Heinrich Klaproth Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1 December 1743 – 1 January 1817) was a German chemist. He trained and worked for much of his life as an apothecary, moving in later life to the university. His shop became the second-largest apothecary in Berlin, and ...

, a chemist, found that it could be used in dye industry. This happened shortly after the discovery of

Uranus Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a Supercritical fluid, supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or Volatile ( ...

and Klaproth dubbed the black uranium oxide powder "

", mistakenly believing it to be an element. Adolf Patera was asked to examine the commercial possibilities of the new substance, and he presented a paper on the use of uranium to the Imperial Academy of Science in 1847, also describing a method of

vanadium Vanadium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol V and atomic number 23. It is a hard, silvery-grey, malleable transition metal. The elemental metal is rarely found in nature, but once isolated artificially, the formation of an ...

extraction from the uranium ores. This led to the construction of a new factory which started production in 1853 of uranium pigments (sodium, potassium and ammonium diuranates, uranium oxides) for the production of

uranium glass Uranium glass is glass which has had uranium, usually in oxide diuranate form, added to a glass mix before melting for colouration. The proportion usually varies from trace levels to about 2% uranium by weight, although some 20th-century pieces ...

from high-grade pitchblende in a process developed by Patera. The process resulted in waste with a high radium content and was used by

Pierre Pierre is a masculine given name. It is a French form of the name Peter. Pierre originally meant "rock" or "stone" in French (derived from the Greek word πέτρος (''petros'') meaning "stone, rock", via Latin "petra"). It is a translation ...

and

Marie Curie Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie (; ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), known simply as Marie Curie ( ; ), was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was List of female ...

in their separation of radium. The lustrous fire-resistant dyes coming in so many shades of yellow, black, orange and green became extremely popular and they were used as a matter of course for Czech glass and porcelain decoration, with burgeoning exports to Great Britain and France. Uranium glass is considered to be harmless and only marginally more active than background radiation.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Patera, Adolf 1819 births 1894 deaths Chemists from Austria-Hungary Scientists from the Austrian Empire