Irish physician and chemist · 1748–1795
Adair Crawford
Adair Crawford was the first to recognise that a mineral from the lead mines of Strontian, in Scotland, contained a new earth. It led to the element strontium.
How Strontium was found
In 1790 Crawford and his colleague William Cruickshank compared the mineral with barium carbonate, which it closely resembled. They found that it formed different salts and dissolved differently, and concluded it contained a new earth.
The mineral was named strontianite and the earth strontia. Humphry Davy isolated metallic strontium by electrolysis in 1808. Strontium salts burn with a bright red flame and are used in fireworks.
Life and career
Born 1748 · Died 1795
Crawford was born in County Antrim, Ireland, studied in Glasgow and became a physician in London. He was professor of chemistry at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.
His earlier research on animal heat measured the heat given off by living creatures, linking respiration to combustion.
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1790.