Elementymology & Elements Multidict

memory peg	White P: a translucent, waxy white solid. Red P: a bright red powder. Black P: a very dark red/black crystalline mass< melting point 44 °C; 111 °F boiling point 280 °C; 536 °F density 1.82-2.69 g/cc; 113.62-167.93 pounds/cubic foot
1669 Henning Brand, Germany
φωσφορος (fōsforos) = light carrying, luminous (Greek) known as Phosphorus mirabilis from antiquity

Discovery of the element Phosphorus is the earliest for which its discoverer is known, although details of earlier discoveries of elements may have been lost. Alchemists often heated vinegar (an acid) or urine (sometimes a base) as ingredients with earths and metals to cause chemical transmutations. In 1669, the German merchant ant amateur-alchemist Henning Brand (ca. 1630-1710) in Hamburg was the first to obtain elementary Phosphorus. He was heating concentrated urine and preventing the admittance of air. There was a snow-white substance at the bottom of a retort. It burned out immediately with a dark and choking smoke. The most interesting thing about that substance was that it was illuminating in the dark and Brand was able to read old alchemy works under its light. So, in 1669 a chemical element was discovered while trying to manufacture gold. His discovery was immortalised in the painting by Joseph Wright of Derby (see illustration).

He wrote about his discovery to the mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716), who later in his Historia inventionis phosphori (Berlin, 1710), wrote that Brand was an impoverished merchant who sought to restore his wealth by converting base metals into gold; and during his alchemical experiments with urine discovered Phosphorus.
As was typical in alchemy at the time, the details of the method were kept secret. Brand sold his secret to the German physician Johannes Daniel Krafft, who showed off the new wonder substance around the courts of Europe. The secret that it was made from urine leaked out and first Johann Kunckel von Löwenstern (1630 or '38-1703) in Sweden (1678) and later Robert Boyle (1627-1691) in London (1680) also managed to make Phosphorus. Boyle's assistant, Ambrose Godfrey Hanckwitz, developed the process on a commercial scale, improved it, and exported Phosphorus to the continent. He founded a famous pharmaceutical firm in London know simply as Ambrose Godfrey.

The method of producing Phosphorus by evaporating urine was generally adopted until 1775, when C.W. Scheele prepared it from bones, which had been shown by J.G. Gahn in 1769 to contain calcium phosphate (Ca₃(PO₄)₂).

The name Phosphorus was originally given to any substance which possessed the property of phosphorescence, a name given to a variety of physical phenomena due to different causes, but all consisting in the emission of a pale, more or less ill-defined light, not obviously due to combustion. The word was first used by physicists to describe the property possessed by many substances of themselves becoming luminous after exposure to light. This property has been noticed from early times. But the first discovery of this property which apparently attracted scientific attention seems to have been that of the Bologna stone (Barium sulphide, cf. Barium), which was discovered by Vincenzo Cascariolo, a cobbler of Bologna, in about 1602. This was followed by the discovery of a number of other substances which become luminous either after exposure to light or on heating, or by attrition, and to which the general name of "phosphori" was given. Among these may be mentioned Homberg's phosphorus (calcium chloride), John Canton's phosphorus (calcium sulphide) and Balduin's phosphorus (calcium nitrate). Now the name is restricted to a non-metallic element, which was first known as Phosphorus mirabilis or igneus.
The word is Greek, φωσφορος [fōsforos] = light carrying, luminous (φωσ [fōs] = light, φερω [ferō] = to carry).

• In the 19th century a native Czech name was proposed: kostík, from "kost" = bone (since calcium phosphate forming about 58% of bones).
• The Hebrew zarhan derives from "zarah" = bright light or illumination.

• Mary Elvira Weeks, Discovery of the Elements, comp. rev. by Henry M. Leicester (Easton, Pa.: Journal of Chemical Education, 1968), pp. 110-130.
• Peter E. Childs, Phosphorus: fire from urine. 1. The discovery and production of phosphorus. Chemistry in Action! 60 (Spring 2000) (on-line).
• James B. Calvert, "Phosphorus" 2002 (on-line).