Discovery of ruthenium

Ruthenium was isolated in 1844 by Karl Ernst Claus, a chemist at the University of Kazan in Russia, who worked with residues from platinum ores from the Ural Mountains. An earlier claim to the discovery of the same element had been made in 1828 by Gottfried Osann, but his results were not confirmed. Claus proved that the residue contained a new metal, and he named it after Ruthenia, the Latin name for Russia, in honour of his adopted country. Ruthenium is a hard, rare, silvery-white metal in the platinum group. It is used to harden platinum and palladium in electrical contacts, in chemical catalysts and in some electronic components.

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