Johan Gottlieb Gahn

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Johan Gottlieb Gahn

Johan Gottlieb Gahn (born August 19, 1745 in Voxnabruk , Ovanåker municipality , † December 8, 1818 in Falun ) was a Swedish chemist. He represented manganese in pure form and was later considered the discoverer of manganese.

Life

Gahn lost his father early and inherited a mine. From 1762 he studied in Uppsala with Torbern Olof Bergman and in 1767 became his assistant. After completing his studies in 1770, he worked as a mining engineer at the mining college. In Uppsala he met Carl Wilhelm Scheele , who was employed at a pharmacy and with whom he worked.

Gahn was very skilled with the soldering tube and as an analyst and introduced platinum wire and cobalt bead to analytics. He discovered around 1770 that the mineral part of the bones mainly consists of calcium phosphate, which Scheele mentions in a work from 1771 without naming the real discoverer. Together with Scheele, Gahn developed a method of extracting phosphorus from "bone earth". In 1774 he isolated metallic manganese by reducing manganese dioxide (brownstone). Bergman had previously recognized that it was a metal oxide and Scheele tried to reduce it in vain. The Austrian Ignatius Gottfried Kaim probably found metallic manganese as early as 1770, but that received little attention at the time.

Also in 1774 he won barium oxide (barite) from barite .

In Falun , he improved the smelting of the ores extracted in the local copper mine and extracted sulfur, iron and copper vitriol from the pit water using processing plants he built.

In 1793 he was appointed a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences . Since 1808 he was a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

literature

  • Winfried R. Pötsch (lead), Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists . Harri Deutsch, 1989, p. 161 f.
  • Johan Gottlieb Gahn . In: Herman Hofberg, Frithiof Heurlin, Viktor Millqvist, Olof Rubenson (eds.): Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon . 2nd Edition. tape 1 : A-K . Albert Bonniers Verlag, Stockholm 1906, p. 378 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).

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personal data
SURNAME Gahn, Johan Gottlieb
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish chemist
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1745
PLACE OF BIRTH Voxnabruk, Ovanåker (municipality)
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1818
Place of death Falun