German friar, bishop and scholar · c. 1200–1280
Albertus Magnus
Albertus Magnus, a 13th-century Dominican friar, is traditionally credited with being the first to isolate arsenic as an element, around 1250.
How Arsenic was found
Arsenic compounds such as orpiment and realgar had been used as pigments and poisons since antiquity. Albertus described heating orpiment with soap, which produced a substance that looked metallic.
Whether he truly obtained the element is uncertain; his description is brief. But he is the first writer whose account plausibly describes elemental arsenic, which is why the discovery is attributed to him.
Life and career
Born c. 1200 · Died 1280
Albertus was born around 1200 in Lauingen, Bavaria, and studied in Padua. He joined the Dominican order and taught in Paris and Cologne, where Thomas Aquinas was his pupil.
He wrote on philosophy, theology, botany, zoology, astronomy and minerals, and was famous for his learning even in his lifetime, earning the name “the Great”. He served briefly as Bishop of Regensburg and was declared a saint in 1931.
Also known for
- Patron saint of scientists
- Teacher of Thomas Aquinas