A vial holding argon ice that is melting. The vial, containing argon gas, had been immersed in liquid nitrogen, causing the gas to freeze. It started melting upon removal.
27 January 2023
The existence of argon, element number 18, was hypothesized by British physicist Henry Cavendish in 1785, but the element was not isolated until 1894, when the 3rd Baron Rayleigh (John William Strutt) and William Ramsay accomplished that task. Rayleigh and Ramsay took the name from the Greek άργός (argos, meaning inactive) as the element is non-reactive.
Reference to Rayleigh and Ramsay’s discovery of argon was first reported in the medical journal the Lancet of 29 December 1894:
ARGON.
We learn that Lord Rayleigh and Professor Ramsay will read a paper at the meeting of the Royal Society on the 31st prox. on an element stated to exist in the atmosphere. As the element has actually received a name (argon), there seems to be no doubt that the new candidate is entitled to a seat among the earlier-known elements after all.
(The Oxford English Dictionary credits this announcement to the Daily News (London) on the day prior. But that paper credits the Lancet and repeats the announcement as it appears in that journal word for word. It seems that, as is often the case with journals, actual production and release of the issue preceded its official date of publication.)
Rayleigh and Ramsay delivered their paper, titled Argon, a New Constituent of the Atmosphere, to the Royal Society on 31 January 1895. In their paper, they wrote of the name:
We do not claim to have exhausted the possible reagents. But this much is certain, that the gas deserves the name “argon,” for it is a most astonishingly indifferent body, inasmuch as it is unattacked by elements of very opposite character, ranging from sodium and magnesium on the one hand, to oxygen, chlorine, and sulphur on the other.
The day following the delivery of their paper, the Daily Telegraph published the following rather nationalistic account of the discovery and the naming of the element, titled Mystery of the Air. A Triumph for British Science. The article is dissonant with the ethos of present-day science but is characteristic of the Victorian era:
Nature often eludes, but never tricks her disciple. “Here,” therefore said the patient investigators, “is an undiscovered form of matter. What are its properties?” One of these was an invincible reluctance to combine with anything else. It would have nothing to do with oxygen, chlorine, phosphorus, sodium, platinum, and various other substances. Even the gentle persuasion of the electric arc was in vain to make it take up companionship with anything else. Hence the philosophers have called their protégé Argon, from the obvious Greek roots signifying inert, or wanting in energy. Too much reliance must not be placed on this bland innocence of Argon. The nitrogen of the air is itself one of the quietest of substances. At first glance it seems as though its great use was to prevent the oxygen burning up everything. Without its presence in the atmosphere steel itself would blaze away, and every diamond in a lady’s tiara would scintillate into millions of dancing particles. Gentle nitrogen prevents all this; but try it in nitroglycerine, and how different its behaviour! Indeed the nitrogen compounds are the armoury of the Anarchist, and so it may happen that when more is known of Argon its character for meekness and inactivity may require modification.
Until 1957, the chemical symbol for argon was generally taken to be A. But that year the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which governs official chemical nomenclature, changed it to Ar, the symbol in use today, to bring it in line with the other noble gases, which all have two-letter symbols. Ar had been in occasional use since at least 1908.
Sources:
“Argon.” Daily News (London), 28 December 1894, 3. British Newspaper Archive.
“Argon.” The Lancet, 29 December 1894, 1573. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Cavendish, Henry. “Experiments on Air” (2 June 1785). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 75.75, December 1785, 372–84.
“Mystery of the Air. A Triumph for British Science.” Daily Telegraph (London), 1 February 1895, 3. Gale Primary Sources: The Telegraph Historical Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2011, s.v. Ar, n.2, A, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. argon, n.
Rayleigh, Lord (John William Strutt) and William Ramsay. “Argon, a New Constituent of the Atmosphere” (31 January 1895), Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (A), 186, 1895, 234. Nineteenth Century Collections Online.
Photo credit: unknown photographer, 2007. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2