Nils Gabriel Sefström (2 June 1787 – 30 November 1845) was a Swedish chemist. Sefström was a student of Berzelius and, when studying the brittleness of steel in 1830, he rediscovered a new chemical element, to which he gave the name vanadium.
Vanadium was first discovered by the Spanish-Mexican mineralogist Andrés Manuel del Río in 1801. He named it erythronium. Friedrich Wöhler later confirmed that vanadium and erythronium were the same substance.
Sefström was member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences from 1815. He was head teacher at the School of Mines at Falun from 1822 to 1838.: 684
The Spitzbergen glacier Sefströmbreen, and the mountain ridge of Sefströmkammen, are named after him.
Further reading
- Sjoberg, Sven Gosta (1951). "Nils Gabriel Sefstrom and the Discovery of Vanadium". Journal of Chemical Education. 28 (6): 294–296. Bibcode:1951JChEd..28..294S. doi:10.1021/ed028p294. [dead link] - subscription required
- Weeks, Mary Elvira (1932). "The Discovery of the Elements: VII. Columbium, Tantalum, and Vanadium". Journal of Chemical Education. 9 (5): 863–884. Bibcode:1932JChEd...9..863W. doi:10.1021/ed009p863. [dead link] - subscription required
- Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon: Sefström, Nils Gabriel - in Swedish
References
N. G. Sefström (1831). "Ueber das Vanadin, ein neues Metall, gefunden im Stangeneisen von Eckersholm, einer Eisenhütte, die ihr Erz von Taberg in Småland bezieht". Annalen der Physik und Chemie. 97 (1): 43–49. Bibcode:1831AnP....97...43S. doi:10.1002/andp.18310970103. https://zenodo.org/record/1423544 ↩
Pedro Cintas (2004). "The Road to Chemical Names and Eponyms: Discovery, Priority, and Credit". Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 43 (44): 5888–5894. doi:10.1002/anie.200330074. PMID 15376297. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩
Weeks, Mary Elvira (1956). The Discovery of the Elements (6th ed.). Journal Of Chemical Education. /wiki/Mary_Elvira_Weeks ↩
"Sefströmbreen (Svalbard)". Norwegian Polar Institute. Archived from the original on 4 February 2014. Retrieved 28 January 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20140204022409/http://placenames.npolar.no/stadnamn/Sefstr%C3%B6mbreen ↩
"Sefströmkammen (Svalbard)". Norwegian Polar Institute. Archived from the original on 1 February 2014. Retrieved 28 January 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20140201230010/http://placenames.npolar.no/stadnamn/Sefstr%C3%B6mkammen ↩