Editing Group 5 element (section)

=== Vanadium ===

Vanadium was [[discovery of the chemical elements|discovered]] in 1801 by the Spanish mineralogist [[Andrés Manuel del Río]]. Del Río extracted the element from a sample of Mexican "brown lead" ore, later named [[vanadinite]]. He found that its salts exhibit a wide variety of colors, and as a result he named the element ''panchromium'' (Greek: παγχρώμιο "all colors"). Later, Del Río renamed the element ''erythronium'' (Greek: ερυθρός "red") because most of the salts turned red upon heating. In 1805, French chemist [[Hippolyte Victor Collet-Descotils]], backed by del Río's friend Baron [[Alexander von Humboldt]], incorrectly declared that del Río's new element was an impure sample of [[chromium]]. Del Río accepted Collet-Descotils' statement and retracted his claim.<ref name="Cintas">{{cite journal|title= The Road to Chemical Names and Eponyms: Discovery, Priority, and Credit|author= Cintas, Pedro|journal= Angewandte Chemie International Edition|volume= 43|issue= 44|date= 2004|pmid= 15376297|doi= 10.1002/anie.200330074|pages= 5888–94}}</ref>

In 1831 Swedish chemist [[Nils Gabriel Sefström]] rediscovered the element in a new oxide he found while working with [[iron ore]]s. Later that year, [[Friedrich Wöhler]] confirmed del Río's earlier work.<ref name="sefs">{{cite journal|title= Ueber das Vanadin, ein neues Metall, gefunden im Stangeneisen von Eckersholm, einer Eisenhütte, die ihr Erz von Taberg in Småland bezieht|first= N. G.|last= Sefström|journal= [[Annalen der Physik und Chemie]]|volume= 97|issue= 1|pages= 43–49|date= 1831|doi= 10.1002/andp.18310970103|bibcode= 1831AnP....97...43S|url= https://zenodo.org/record/1423544}}</ref> Sefström chose a name beginning with V, which had not yet been assigned to any element. He called the element ''vanadium'' after [[Old Norse]] ''[[list of names of Freyja|Vanadís]]'' (another name for the [[Norse mythology|Norse]] [[Vanir]] goddess [[Freyja]], whose attributes include beauty and fertility), because of the many beautifully colored [[chemical compound]]s it produces.<ref name="sefs" /> In 1831, the geologist [[George William Featherstonhaugh]] suggested that vanadium should be renamed ''rionium'' after del Río, but this suggestion was not followed.<ref>{{cite journal |journal= The Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science |first= George William|last= Featherstonhaugh |title=New Metal, provisionally called Vanadium |year= 1831|page=69 |url= https://archive.org/stream/monthlyamericanj11831phil#page/68/mode/2up/search/rionium}}</ref><!--Featherstonhaugh, the editor of the journal cited, comments on a letter from Berzelious to [[Pierre Louis Dulong]]-->