Georg Brandt

Georg Brandt, who lived from 1694 to 1768, was a Swedish chemist and mineralogist who discovered cobalt around 1735 and was the first person to discover a metal unknown in ancient times. Born in Riddarhyttan to a mine owner and pharmacist, he was professor of chemistry at Uppsala University and died in Stockholm. He showed that cobalt, rather than the bismuth found with it in ores, was the source of the blue colour in glass, and about 1741 argued from reliable experiments that besides the six metals there were six half metals, among them cobalt regulus. He gave six ways of telling bismuth and cobalt apart, for example that bismuth amalgamates with mercury while cobalt does not at all. He is also known for exposing fraudulent alchemists who were operating during his lifetime.