A lithium-ion battery
5 January 2024
Lithium is a soft, silvery-white, alkali metal with atomic number 3 and the symbol Li. Like all alkali metals, it is highly reactive and must be stored either in a vacuum or in an inert atmosphere or liquid. Lithium as a variety of industrial uses, notably in batteries, and it is also a component of many mood-stabilizing and antidepressant drugs. Much of the lithium in the universe was produced in the Big Bang, but stellar novae are also a source of the metal.
It was first discovered in 1817 by Johan August Arfwedson, a student of Jöns Jacob Berzelius. Berzelius named the element lithium after the Greek λιθoς (lithos, stone) because of its being found in petalite ore. Berzelius published the discovery in a 27 January 1818 letter to the Journal für Chemie und Physik:
Herr August Arfwedson, ein junger sehr ver-dienstvoller Chemiker, der seit einem Jahre in meinem Laboratorio arbeitet, fand bei einer Analyse des Petalits von Uto's Eisengrube, einen alkas lischen Bestandtheil, der sich weder wie Kali noch wie Natron verhielt, und der sich bei näheren Untersuchungen als ein eigenes feuerfestes Alkali bewährt hat. […] Wir haben es Lithion genannt, um dadurch auf seine erste Entdeckung im Mineralreich anzuspielen, da die beiden anderen erst in der organischen Natur entdeckt wurden. Sein Radical wird dann Lithium genannt werden.
(Mr. August Arfwedson, a young, very distinguished chemist who has been working in my laboratory for a year, discovered, during an analysis of the petalite from Uto's iron mine, an alkaline component which behaved neither like potash nor like sodium bicarbonate, and which closer investigations have proven to be a proprietary fireproof alkali. […] We have named it Lithion to allude to its first discovery in the mineral kingdom, since the other two were first detected in organic matter. Its radical will then be called lithium.)
Sources:
Berzelius, Jöns Jacob. “Ein Neues Mineralisches Alkali und En Neues Metall” (27 January 1818). Journal für Chemie und Physik, vol. 21, 1817, 44–48 at 45. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements: Part 2—Turbulent Nineteenth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 8 December 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09451-w.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. lithium, n.
Image credit: Krzysztof Woźnica, 2005. Wikiwand. Public domain image.