Martin Heinrich Klaproth

Martin Heinrich Klaproth was a German chemist, born in Wernigerode in 1743, who spent most of his working life as an apothecary in Berlin, where his shop became one of the largest apothecaries in the city and a highly productive chemical research centre. He was a major systematiser of analytical chemistry and an independent inventor of gravimetric analysis, and his refusal to ignore discrepancies in results led to improvements in the use of apparatus. He discovered uranium and zirconium in 1789 and took part in the discovery of titanium, strontium, cerium and chromium. He became a member and later director of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Society and, when the University of Berlin was founded in 1810, its professor of chemistry. He died in 1817.