I got a big envelope in the mail that had written on the front, "Photographs: Do Not Bend."
Underneath the mailman wrote, "Oh, yes they do."
Hieronymus Theodor RichterBorn 21 Nov 1824; died 25 Sep 1898 at age 73.German mineralogist who in 1863 was a co-discoverer of the element indium. He was an expert in metallurgy, essaying and an authority on blowpipe analysis. He was assistant to Ferdinand Reich who suspected a new element was present in the samples of zinc ore he had chemically processed. Reich was colourblind and turned over the job of making a spectroscopic analysis to his assistant. When Richter placed some of the sample in a loop of platinum wire and heated it in the flame of a Bunsen burner, he observed a brilliant indigo line characteristic of this as a new element - called indium after the colour of this line. After separating the hydrated oxide of indium, they reduced it to obtain a sample of the new metal. |
