Johan Gottlieb Gahn (19 August 1745 – 8 December 1818) was a
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
chemist
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe t ...
and
metallurgist
Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys.
Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...
who isolated
manganese
Manganese is a chemical element with the symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese is a transition metal with a multifaceted array of industrial alloy use ...
in 1774.
Gahn studied in
Uppsala
Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019.
Located north of the c ...
1762 – 1770 and became acquainted with chemists
Torbern Bergman
Torbern Olaf (Olof) Bergman (''KVO'') (20 March 17358 July 1784) was a Swedish chemist and mineralogist noted for his 1775 ''Dissertation on Elective Attractions'', containing the largest chemical affinity tables ever published. Bergman was the ...
and
Carl Wilhelm Scheele
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (, ; 9 December 1742 – 21 May 1786) was a Swedish German pharmaceutical chemist.
Scheele discovered oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), and identified molybdenum, tungsten, barium, hyd ...
.
1770 he settled in
Falun
Falun () is a city and the seat of Falun Municipality in Dalarna County, Sweden, with 37,291 inhabitants in 2010. It is also the capital of Dalarna County. Falun forms, together with Borlänge, a metropolitan area with just over 100,000 inhabitan ...
, where he introduced improvements in copper
smelting
Smelting is a process of applying heat to ore, to extract a base metal. It is a form of extractive metallurgy. It is used to extract many metals from their ores, including silver, iron, copper, and other base metals. Smelting uses heat and a ...
, and participated in building up several factories, including those for
vitriol
Vitriol is the general chemical name encompassing a class of chemical compound comprising sulfates of certain metalsoriginally, iron or copper. Those mineral substances were distinguished by their color, such as green vitriol for hydrated iron( ...
,
sulfur and
red paint.
He was the chemist for The Swedish Board of Mines ''
Bergskollegium'' from 1773 – 1817. Gahn was however very reluctant to publish his scientific findings himself, but freely communicated them to Bergman and Scheele. One of Gahn's discoveries was that
manganese dioxide could be reduced to manganese metal using
carbon
Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon mak ...
, becoming the first to isolate this element in its metal form.
In 1784, Gahn was elected a member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He also made a managerial career in Swedish mining.
See also
*
Gahnite
Gahnite, ZnAl2O4, is a rare mineral belonging to the spinel group. It forms octahedral crystals which may be green, blue, yellow, brown or grey. It often forms as an alteration product of sphalerite in altered massive sulphide deposits such as a ...
, named after Johan Gottlieb Gahn.
References
Further reading
*
External links
Article in ''Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon''
Eggerlz H.P., Palmstedt C. Nekrolog. Jahann Gottlieb Gahns Leben.// Jahrbuch der Chemie und Physik. - Nürnberg, 1822. P. 140.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gahn, Johan Gottlieb
1745 births
1818 deaths
18th-century Swedish chemists
Uppsala University alumni
Discoverers of chemical elements
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
19th-century Swedish chemists
Manganese
Age of Liberty people