Bismuth in the form of a synthetic crystal; oxidation has given it a colorful patina
10 March 2023
Bismuth is a brittle, silvery-white metal which takes on a rosy tint through oxidation when exposed to air. It is atomic number 83 and uses the symbol Bi. Long thought to be the element with the highest atomic number that is not radioactive, it has been found that that its natural isotope, Bi-209, emits alpha particles, but its half-life exceeds the current age of the universe.
Bismuth is common in nature but for most of history was confused with lead or tin, a confusion that persisted into the eighteenth century. It was also believed by some to be an immature form of silver, called tectum argenti (hidden silver), that if left in the ground would become true silver.
The name comes from the Old High German Wismut or Wismuth, a term of uncertain origin, although the first element is very likely related to weiße (white). In the sixteenth century, minerologist Georgius Agricola Latinized the German name into bisemutium, from which the modern German and English names are derived. The English name bismuth is in place by the mid seventeenth century when it appears in a translation of German-Dutch alchemist Johann Rudolf Glaubner’s 1651 A Description of New Philosophical Furnaces:
It is not unknown to the diggers of minerals that sometimes there are immature minerals found which have neither gold nor silver in them, which being a little while exposed to the aire, and then being tryed yeeld gold and silver as wel in a greater as in a lesser proofe; such are Bismuth, Coboltum, Auripigmentum; and other Antimonial, and Arsenical minerals.
Sources:
Glauber, Johann Rudolf. A Description of New Philosophical Furnaces. J.F.D.M., trans. London: Richard Coats for Thomas Williams, 1651, 365. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. bismuth, n.
Weeks, Mary Elvira. “The Discovery of the Elements. II. Elements Known to the Alchemists.” Journal of Chemical Education, 9.1, January 1932, 15–16.