Johan Gottlieb Gahn (19 August 1745 – 8 December 1818) was a Swedish

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...

and metallurgist who isolated

manganese Manganese is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese was first isolated in the 1770s. It is a transition m ...

in 1774. Gahn studied in

Uppsala Uppsala ( ; ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the capital of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Loc ...

from 1762 to 1770 and became acquainted with chemists Torbern Bergman and

Carl Wilhelm Scheele Carl Wilhelm Scheele (, ; 9 December 1742 – 21 May 1786) was a Swedish Pomerania, German-Swedish pharmaceutical chemist. Scheele discovered oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), and identified the elements molybd ...

. 1770 he settled in

Falun Falun () is a city and the seat of Falun Municipality in Dalarna County, Sweden, with 37,291 inhabitants in 2010. It is also the capital of Dalarna County. Falun forms, together with Borlänge, a metropolitan area with just over 100,000 inhabit ...

, where he introduced improvements in copper

smelting Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron-making, iron, copper extraction, copper ...

, and participated in building up several factories, including those for vitriol,

sulfur Sulfur ( American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphur ( Commonwealth spelling) is a chemical element; it has symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms ...

and red paint. He was the chemist for the Swedish Board of Mines from 1773 to 1817. He was very reluctant to publish his scientific findings himself, but freely communicated them to Bergman and Scheele. One of Gahn's discoveries was that manganese dioxide could be reduced to manganese metal using

carbon Carbon () is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 ...

, becoming the first to isolate this element in its metal form. In 1784, Gahn was elected a member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...

. He also had a managerial career in Swedish mining.

References

External links

Article in ''Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon''

Eggerlz H.P., Palmstedt C. Nekrolog. Jahann Gottlieb Gahns Leben.
// Jahrbuch der Chemie und Physik. - Nürnberg, 1822. P. 140. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gahn, Johan Gottlieb 1745 births 1818 deaths 18th-century Swedish chemists Uppsala University alumni Discoverers of chemical elements Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 19th-century Swedish chemists Manganese Age of Liberty people

See also

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Further reading

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