Discovery of fluorine

The existence of fluorine was suspected long before the element could be isolated. Fluorspar, the mineral now called fluorite, had been used as a flux in metalworking, and its name comes from the Latin fluere, to flow. In 1810 the French physicist Andre-Marie Ampere suggested that hydrofluoric acid contained a new element similar to chlorine, and the English chemist Humphry Davy agreed and proposed the name fluorine in 1812. Isolating it proved extremely difficult, since fluorine is the most reactive of all elements, and several experimenters were poisoned or injured in attempts. The French chemist Henri Moissan finally succeeded in 1886 by the electrolysis of hydrogen fluoride at low temperature, and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1906.

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