Austrian chemist and inventor · 1858–1929
Carl Auer von Welsbach
Carl Auer von Welsbach discovered three elements and turned rare earths into everyday products. His gas mantle lit the world’s streets and his lighter flint is still in pockets everywhere.
- Elements credited
- 3
- Discoveries
- 1885–1907
- Co-discoverers
- 2
- Where
- Austria; France, Austria and United States
Discovery timeline
1885 · Austria
Praseodymium is a soft, silvery rare-earth metal. It is used in powerful magnets and gives glass a yellow-green tint.
1885 · Austria
Neodymium is a rare-earth metal best known for the neodymium–iron–boron magnets, the strongest permanent magnets available.
1907 · France, Austria and United States
Lutetium is the last and hardest lanthanide. It is one of the rarest and most expensive rare-earth metals.
The discoveries
In 1885, using thousands of fractional crystallisations, Auer split Mosander’s didymium into two new elements. He named them praseodymium, “green twin”, after the colour of its salts, and neodymium, “new twin”.
In 1907 he showed that ytterbium was itself a mixture and separated a new element he called cassiopeium. Georges Urbain in Paris and Charles James in New Hampshire reached the same result independently, and Urbain’s name, lutetium, was adopted.
Life and career
Auer was born in Vienna and studied under Robert Bunsen in Heidelberg, where he learned spectroscopy and rare-earth chemistry. His gas mantle, patented in the 1880s and perfected with thorium and cerium oxides in 1891, made gas lighting several times brighter.
He also developed the osmium-filament light bulb and, in 1903, ferrocerium, the spark-making alloy in lighter flints. He founded companies that still exist, and was made a baron.
Also known for
- The Auer gas mantle
- Ferrocerium lighter flints
- Osmium filament lamp, forerunner of the Osram brand