Discovery of hafnium

Hafnium was discovered in 1922 by the Dutch physicist Dirk Coster and the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy in Copenhagen. Niels Bohr's theory of atomic structure had predicted that element 72 should resemble zirconium and not the rare earths, as many chemists thought. Following this lead, Coster and Hevesy used X-ray spectroscopy to examine zirconium ores from Norway and Greenland and found the characteristic lines of the new element. They named it hafnium after Hafnia, the Latin name for Copenhagen. The discovery was a notable success for Bohr's ideas. Because hafnium strongly absorbs neutrons, it is used in control rods for nuclear reactors, and its compounds are used in the insulating layers of modern microchips.

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