Chapter 1
Introduction General Information
on Technetium
In March 1869, the Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev presented to the Russian
Society of Physics and Chemistry, the idea of the so-called periodic table. He
proposed that chemical elements can be arranged in a table according to their
periodically varying chemical properties. The significance of this discovery lies
in the fact that the periodic table not only delivers information on chemistry of
already known elements but also allows predicting the existence of not yet discovered elements with respective chemical properties. Mendeleev published his early
version of the periodic table in a textbook for his students, entitled The Principles of
Chemistry (Mendeleev 1869a, b), and in scientific journals: Zhurnal Russkago FizikoKhimicheskago Obshchestva and Zeitschrift für Chemie (Mendelejeff 1869). At that
time, only around 60 elements were known and the announcement of Mendeleev’s
method of ordering of the chemical elements has stimulated researchers to search for
new, undiscovered elements, the existence and properties of which were predicted
by the periodic table.
One of the vacant places in the original periodic table of Mendeleev was located
below manganese, indicating the existence of an unknown element with chemical
properties similar to Mn and called eka-manganese. Kern (1877) was the first who
announced the discovery of a new element whose chemical properties resembled
those of manganese and which was supposed to be its analog. He named it davyum,
in honor of the great British chemist Davy. Eventually, the material separated by
Kern turned out to be an alloy of iridium, rhodium and iron. The lucium reported by
Barriére (1896) also proved to be an already known element, in this case yttrium.
Another attempt to discover the element 43 was made by Ogawa (see: Yoshihara
2008), who isolated from thorianite and molybdenum a material named nipponium,
after Japan. This material also turned out to be not technetium, but most likely
rhenium. The discovery of rhenium, however, is today attributed to Noddack et al.
(1925). In 1925, they reported the discovery of two new elements present in the
minerals of columbite, one of them was named rhenium while the other one, the
“eka-manganese,” was named masurium (after Masuria in the East Prussia, now
Poland). These elements with the atomic numbers 75 and 43, respectively, filled
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. Chotkowski and A. Czerwi´ nski, Electrochemistry of Technetium,
Monographs in Electrochemistry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62863-5_1
1
Introduction General Information
on Technetium
In March 1869, the Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev presented to the Russian
Society of Physics and Chemistry, the idea of the so-called periodic table. He
proposed that chemical elements can be arranged in a table according to their
periodically varying chemical properties. The significance of this discovery lies
in the fact that the periodic table not only delivers information on chemistry of
already known elements but also allows predicting the existence of not yet discovered elements with respective chemical properties. Mendeleev published his early
version of the periodic table in a textbook for his students, entitled The Principles of
Chemistry (Mendeleev 1869a, b), and in scientific journals: Zhurnal Russkago FizikoKhimicheskago Obshchestva and Zeitschrift für Chemie (Mendelejeff 1869). At that
time, only around 60 elements were known and the announcement of Mendeleev’s
method of ordering of the chemical elements has stimulated researchers to search for
new, undiscovered elements, the existence and properties of which were predicted
by the periodic table.
One of the vacant places in the original periodic table of Mendeleev was located
below manganese, indicating the existence of an unknown element with chemical
properties similar to Mn and called eka-manganese. Kern (1877) was the first who
announced the discovery of a new element whose chemical properties resembled
those of manganese and which was supposed to be its analog. He named it davyum,
in honor of the great British chemist Davy. Eventually, the material separated by
Kern turned out to be an alloy of iridium, rhodium and iron. The lucium reported by
Barriére (1896) also proved to be an already known element, in this case yttrium.
Another attempt to discover the element 43 was made by Ogawa (see: Yoshihara
2008), who isolated from thorianite and molybdenum a material named nipponium,
after Japan. This material also turned out to be not technetium, but most likely
rhenium. The discovery of rhenium, however, is today attributed to Noddack et al.
(1925). In 1925, they reported the discovery of two new elements present in the
minerals of columbite, one of them was named rhenium while the other one, the
“eka-manganese,” was named masurium (after Masuria in the East Prussia, now
Poland). These elements with the atomic numbers 75 and 43, respectively, filled
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. Chotkowski and A. Czerwi´ nski, Electrochemistry of Technetium,
Monographs in Electrochemistry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62863-5_1
1