Spanish naval officer and scientist · 1716–1795
Antonio de Ulloa
Antonio de Ulloa gave Europe its first scientific description of platinum, which he encountered in the gold mines of New Granada during a voyage that began in 1735.
How Platinum was found
Ulloa and Jorge Juan were young Spanish naval officers attached to a French expedition to the equator, sent to measure the shape of the Earth. In what is now Colombia they saw miners discarding a heavy white metal mixed with gold, which they called platina, “little silver”, because it could not be melted.
Ulloa described it in his account of the voyage, published in 1748. Samples reached European chemists, who soon recognised it as a new metal.
Life and career
Born 1716 · Died 1795
Ulloa was born in Seville. On the way home from South America his ship was captured by the British, but his scientific work earned him election to the Royal Society.
He later founded Spain’s first metallurgical laboratory and natural history museum, served as the first Spanish governor of Louisiana from 1766 until a revolt in 1768, and rose to admiral.
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1735.