Magnesium, element number 12, was first isolated by British chemist Humphry Davy in 1808. But the name magnesium is older and was earlier used to refer to the mineral we now call manganese. The word, referring to manganese, appears in a 1781 letter by mineralogist John Black:
The Swedish Chemists [...] have got a Metal from it, they call it Magnesium.1
This sense is utterly obsolete and no one now refers to manganese as magnesium except in error.Read the rest of the article...
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