Swedish chemist · 1694–1768
Georg Brandt
Georg Brandt discovered cobalt around 1735. It was the first metal discovered since antiquity, and Brandt was the first person known by name to discover a metal.
How Cobalt was found
Blue glass and pottery had been coloured with cobalt ores for thousands of years, but the colour was thought to come from bismuth. Brandt showed that the blue came from a previously unknown metal in the ore.
He named it after the kobolds, mischievous spirits of German mining folklore, because the ore looked like silver but gave off poisonous arsenic fumes when smelted and yielded no silver.
Life and career
Born 1694 · Died 1768
Brandt was born in Riddarhyttan, Sweden, where his father owned an ironworks and mines. He studied medicine and chemistry in Leiden and became director of the Swedish Bureau of Mines’ laboratory.
He spent years debunking alchemists who claimed to turn base metals into gold, and was a respected teacher of later Swedish chemists, including Cronstedt.
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1735.