Swiss physicist and chemist · 1827–1890
Jacques-Louis Soret
Jacques-Louis Soret detected the spectrum of holmium in 1878, a year before it was isolated, and called it “element X”.
How Holmium was found
Soret was an expert in absorption spectra, the dark lines a substance produces when light passes through it. Studying rare-earth solutions prepared by Delafontaine, he found bands that matched no known element.
When Cleve isolated holmium in 1879, it proved to have exactly the spectrum Soret had described.
Shared the credit
The discovery is credited jointly to these scientists.
Life and career
Born 1827 · Died 1890
Soret was born in Geneva and taught physics and medical chemistry at its university. In 1865 he showed that ozone molecules are made of three oxygen atoms.
He also studied ultraviolet absorption, and the strong blue absorption band of haemoglobin and similar molecules is still called the Soret band.
Also known for
- Showed that ozone is O₃
- The Soret band in spectroscopy
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1878.