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fixed alkali (KOH), he was able to regenerate
the original alum.'
Marggraf performed his aluminum work at
the Berlin Academy (Figure 4), where he began
working in 1754 after leaving his father's
apothecary (Note 1). Marggraf was perhaps the
first modern analytical chemist.' The chemical
biographer Thompson described him so: "His
papers have a greater resemblance to those of
Scheele than of any other chemist to whom we
can compare them. He may be considered as in
some measure the beginner of chemical analy-
sis; for, before his time, the chemical analysis of
bodies had hardly been attempted."' Even
though his career preceeded Lavoisier's, he
appeared to ignore the theory of phlogiston
and instead used facts and legic to produce
work that appears amazingly modern today.'
Other important work by Marggraf at the Berlin
Academy included the first careful characteri-
zation of sodium and potassium, where he
clearly differentiated these two alkalis for the
first time.'u
Figure 5. Portrait of Orsted (Drawing of I.V
Gertner; courtesy of the Niels Bohr Archive).
Sir Humphrey Davy at the Royal Institution
in London from 1807-1808 was able to separate
for the first time several alkali and alkaline
earths into elemental (metallic) form,'' but he
was unsuccessful in isolating metallic alu-
minum.This first person to accomplish this task
was Hans Christian Orsted (1777-1851),
(Figure 5) the discoverer of electromagnetism
(Note 2). Orsted's work in chemistry was
ignored for years-it has only been recently
established that he should be credited with the
first isolation of elemental aluminum.6
Although mainly interested in physics, Orsted
persuaded the University of Copenhagen in
1823 to set up a chemical laboratory; according-
ly, a two-story stable was converted to a profes-
sor's residence, which included not only the
university physics collection but also the
requested facilities. Here he prepared elemental
j .4
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Figure 4. The Humboldt-Universituit zu Berlin is the former Berlin Academic. At this main entrance on the
historic boulevard dressed with linden trees stands the statue of Alexander von Humboldt (Unter den
Linden 6, N 520 31.06 E 130 23.64). Forty meters to the left sits a statue of his brother Wilhelm, the
founder of the university. Straight ahead 200 meters to the north, on the other side of this building, is the
old site of the Berlin Academy at Dorotheenstrasse 10. In the other direction, to the rear of the viewer, 100
neters to the south, is Belelplat:, the site of the Nazi book biirnines in 1933.
1 C, l
,,wM I I~f 111 1
Ii!.
Figure 6. Right. Orsted's chemical laboratory where he discovered metallic aluminum in 1825
(Studiostrxde 6, N 550 40.75 E 12 34.24). This is not where Orsted made his famous electromagnetism
discoveries (Note 2). This building was taken down in 1914. Left. The appearance of the courtyard today
where the old chemical laboratory stood. Outside the courtyard on the main street, a plaque (in Danish)
translates: "Hans Christian Orsted lived here from October 1824 until the day of his death 9 March 1851."
aluminum in 1825 (Figure 6). Orsted passed
elemental chlorine over a mixture of alum and
charcoal to prepare aluminum chloride (the
classical method of producing volatile metal
chlorides), which he then treated with a potas-
sium amalgam to prepare a few chips of metal
"resembling tin." Orsted did not attempt to
purify the metal or to characterize it fully, and
his attention turned to other scientific matters.
Friedrich Wohler (1800-1882) visited Orsted
in Copenhagen, and hearing that the Danish
scientist planned not to pursue the aluminum
studies, then took up the task himself of
preparing larger and purer quantities of alu-
minum. The laboratory in Berlin where Wbhler
performed his work was the same as where he
prepared elemental yttrium and berylllium, and
verified the presence of the new element vana-
dium. (In a previous HEXAGON we visited
Wohler at this Berlin site'.) Wohler has often
been credited with the"first" isolation of metal-
lic aluminum, whereas he should more accu-
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