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Phosphorus was the first element to be "discovered", in the sense that it was not known since ancient times. [11] The discovery is credited to the Hamburg alchemist Hennig Brand in 1669, who was attempting to create the fabled philosopher's stone. [12]
Phosphorus must have been awe-inspiring to an alchemist: it was a product of man, and seeming to glow with a "life force" that did not diminish over time (and did not need re-exposure to light like the previously discovered Bologna Stone). Brand kept his discovery secret, as alchemists of the time did, and worked with the phosphorus trying ...
Around 1604, Vincenzo Casciarolo discovered a "lapis solaris" near Bologna, Italy. Once heated in an oxygen-rich furnace, it thereafter absorbed sunlight and glowed in the dark. In 1677, Hennig Brand isolated a new element that glowed due to a chemiluminescent reaction when exposed to air, and named it "phosphorus". [8]
Perey discovered it as a decay product of 227 Ac. [178] Francium was the last element to be discovered in nature, rather than synthesized in the lab, although four of the "synthetic" elements that were discovered later (plutonium, neptunium, astatine, and promethium) were eventually found in trace amounts in nature as well. [179]
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Fibrous red phosphorus is another crystalline form of red phosphorus. [7] It is obtained along with violet phosphorus when red phosphorus is sublimed in vacuum in the presence of iodine. [21] It is structurally similar to violet phosphorus. However, in fibrous red phosphorus, phosphorus chains lie parallel instead of orthogonal, unlike violet ...
White phosphorus is the first allotrope of phosphorus, and in fact the first elementary substance to be discovered that was not known since ancient times. [3] It glows greenish in the dark (when exposed to oxygen) and is highly flammable and pyrophoric (self-igniting) upon contact with air.
His procedure was the same as Brandt's, namely to boil human urine down to a residue, then heat that strongly to give off phosphorus gas which would condense. Godfrey produced two forms: solid phosphorus (the white phosphorus allotrope) and a mix with oil of urine where it remains liquid at room temperature.