Discovery of lithium

Lithium was discovered by the Swedish chemist Johan August Arfwedson, who was working in the laboratory of Jons Jacob Berzelius when he analysed the mineral petalite from a mine on the island of Utoe. He found that it contained an unknown alkali, which he named lithium from the Greek word lithos, meaning stone, because it was found in a mineral and not in plant ashes like sodium and potassium. Arfwedson could not isolate the metal itself. This was achieved a few years later, in 1821, by William Thomas Brande and Humphry Davy using electrolysis. The lightest of all metals, lithium has found uses in medicine, in glass and ceramics and, above all, in rechargeable batteries, work on which earned the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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