by Cheryl Rofer
Paul Goble notes that Ruthenia, now part of Ukraine, is the most recent potential breakaway republic to be encouraged by Russia. That reminded me of ruthenium, one of my favorite elements. It’s a favorite because it sits in the middle of the transition series, just below iron, and both of them have a wild variety of chemical transformations they can go through, which (she says glibly*) makes them good components of catalysts.
I love the history that the periodic table (click to enlarge) embodies. As the various elements were discovered, and as they were fitted into that then-mysterious system, many were named for the places where they were found or isolated, or for the people who discovered them. Since Dmitri Mendeleev was one of the developers of the periodic table, it’s not surprising that Russian and European places and people contributed to those names. Mendeleev himself has an element named after him, mendeleevium, number 101, one of those synthesized in particle accelerators.
Samarium was found in samarskite, which was named for 19th-century Russian mine inspector, Col. Samarski, about whom not much seems to be known.
The Swedes have yttrium, terbium, erbium, and ytterbium, all four named for the town of Ytterby, along with scandium, holmium and thulium. The rare earths, which most of those are, tend to be found together mineralogically, so it’s not too surprising that they came from the Ytterby quarry.
Europium generously takes in all of Europe; the American elements come later. Thorium is from one of their gods, vanadium from one of their goddesses. Gadolin was a Finnish chemist who purified gadolinium. Hafnium is from the Latin name for Copenhagen.
France has a couple: francium, discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie, who worked in France and discovered and named several elements, including polonium for Marie’s home country of Poland. Lutetium is named for Paris, an ancient version.
Germanium was one of the elements that Mendeleev predicted; it was discovered (surprise!) in Germany.
Geologic periods of time and names of minerals also have fascinating origins, and some come from Russia. The Permian period breaks down into a number of lovely Russian names: the Gzelian, Kasomovian, Moscovian, and Bashkirian epochs, and still more. Perm is a Russian city in the southern Ural mountains. I think it must be that the rocks that were first studied that define the Permian period were from the Perm area, but I haven’t been able to verify this. Geologists are sometimes not so good about identifying their historical roots; I only realized that Perm must be the basis of the name for the Permian period on one of my trips to Russia. And they don’t necessarily agree on how to divide up their age designations: This site gives Tatarian, Kazanian, Kungurian, Artinskian, and Samarian as the main subdivisions of the Permian. Still Russian.
For mineral names, the Russians give us muscovite, of course (photo from here), and ilmenite, palygorskite, perovskite, tyuyamunite (one of my personal favorites in name), altaite, amakinite, anapaite, and many others. This database gives name derivations.
As it turns out, there are fewer Russian names, relatively speaking, than I thought. But the elements, geologic time scale and mineral names have wonderful histories relating to places, mythology, and physical properties. Check them out.
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* I’ve spent the equivalent of months in the library, on the computer, and thinking about those elements and some others to be able to write that parenthesis. It’s a very general statement, but I suspect that not all chemists would agree with it.
Periodic table from Idaho State University Geosciences Department.