Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rafaelmelhem 1250 days ago
Would Thorium be part of that list as well?

Edit: I kinda know that because I have some weird passion about the elements of periodic table and because I'm reading "Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of The Elements From Arsenic To Zinc" which I really recommend!

1 comments

Indeed, good catch : > Thorium was discovered in 1828 by the Norwegian amateur mineralogist Morten Thrane Esmark and identified by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium

There’s also tungsten: “tung” is heavy, and “sten” stone in Swedish.
Which interestingly is called Volfram in Swedish.
Tungsten refers to the rock where the element is found. The english language reused the name for the actual element.
And in English we use both Tungsten and Wolfram. The former is more popular, but the latter is still the basis of the element's symbol.
I don't know anyone who refers to the element as wolfram in English. The abbreviations are internationally standardized and many don't stand for the English words anyway (Latin is quite common, e.g. Pb means plumbum, for lead).
I also don't know anyone who refers to it as wolfram, but wolfram is all over the tungsten wikipedia page.
There's also Gadolinium after Johan Gadolin
But he was Finnish
But a Swedish speaking Finn and it seems he made his discoveries while living in Sweden.

From wikipedia:

"Johan Gadolin was born in Åbo (Finnish name Turku), Finland (then a part of Sweden)." [0]

"In 1779 Gadolin moved to Uppsala University."

Uppsala is in Sweden.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Gadolin

Also most of todays Finland was under Swedish rule until 1809.
> Finland (then a part of Sweden)

If Gadolin is Finnish, then, by the same logic, Immanuel Kant is Russian, because his birthplace, Koenigsberg, is a Russian exclave now.

> But a Swedish speaking Finn

this is the argument Russia has used to invade Ukraine...

Reminds me of Tesla. Was he Serb or Croatian