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Phosphorus. From Elemental Light to Chemical Element
Author(s) -
Krafft F.
Publication year - 1969
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition in english
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 0570-0833
DOI - 10.1002/anie.196906601
Subject(s) - element (criminal law) , doctrine , history of chemistry , philosophy , chemistry , classics , art history , polymer science , literature , history , art , law , epistemology , theology , history of science , political science
Exactly 300 years ago in the city of Hamburg, a certain Hennig Brand, self‐styled doctor medicinae, and chymist, discovered a strange substance in human urine, which was later called phosphorus (light bearer), a name then common to various luminous substances, and which created much excitement in the latter years of the 17th century on account of its properties. However, it was not Brand who profited from the discovery but others: Johann Daniel Krafft, Johann Kunckel, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, men who knew only too well how to exploit the weaknesses of the discoverer. “Cold fire”, Brand's own name for the new substance, was originally regarded as elemental light or fire, and it was not until the conception of the antiphlogistic theory by Antoine Laurent Lavoisier that the proper position of phosphorus among the chemical elements was recognized. In fact, the element played a decisive role in the overthrow of the phlogiston doctrine, a little over one hundred years after its discovery and almost two hundred years ago.