Hennig Brand

Hennig Brand, who lived from about 1630 to either about 1692 or 1710, was a German alchemist who lived and worked in Hamburg and who in 1669 accidentally discovered the chemical element phosphorus while searching for the philosopher's stone, a substance believed to transmute base metals into gold. Sources disagree on his origins, some describing them as working class with an apprenticeship as a glassmaker, while his second wife wrote that he was of high social standing; he held a post as a junior army officer during the Thirty Years' War, and his first wife's dowry allowed him to pursue alchemy. His second wife Margaretha, a wealthy widow, financed his continued search. Interested in urine, he tried hundreds of combinations, and around 1669 he heated residues of boiled-down urine until glowing fumes filled the retort and a liquid dripped out that solidified and gave off a pale-green glow; he named it phosphorus, from the Greek word for light-bearer. He kept the discovery secret, as alchemists of the time did, and tried without success to use it to produce gold. Later in his career he was employed as a court alchemist in Hanover by Duke Johann Friedrich and corresponded with Leibniz.