text:
Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot (5 October 1713 – 31 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment.

Diderot initially studied philosophy at a Jesuit college, then considered working in the church clergy before briefly studying law. When he decided to become a writer in 1734, his father disowned him. He lived a bohemian existence for the next decade. In the 1740s he wrote many of his best-known works in both fiction and non-fiction, including the 1748 novel Les Bijoux indiscrets (The Indiscreet Jewels).

In 1751 Diderot co-created the Encyclopédie with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. It was the first encyclopedia to include contributions from many named contributors and the first to describe the mechanical arts. Its secular tone, which included articles skeptical about Biblical miracles, angered both religious and government authorities; in 1758 it was banned by the Catholic Church and, in 1759, the French government banned it as well, although this ban was not strictly enforced. Many of the initial contributors to the Encyclopédie left the project as a result of its controversies and some were even jailed. D'Alembert left in 1759, making Diderot the sole editor. Diderot also became the main contributor, writing around 7,000 articles. He continued working on the project until 1765. He was increasingly despondent about the Encyclopédie by the end of his involvement in it and felt that the entire project might have been a waste. Nevertheless, the Encyclopédie is considered one of the forerunners of the French Revolution.

Diderot struggled financially throughout most of his career and received very little official recognition of his merit, including being passed over for membership in the Académie française. His fortunes improved significantly in 1766, when Empress Catherine the Great, who had heard of his financial troubles, generously bought his 3,000-volume personal library, amassed during his work on the Encyclopédie, for 15,000 livres, and offered him in addition a thousand more livres per year to serve as its custodian while he lived. He received 50 years' "salary" up front from her, and stayed five months at her court in Saint Petersburg in 1773 and 1774, sharing discussions and writing essays on various topics for her several times a week.

Diderot's literary reputation during his life rested primarily on his plays and his contributions to the Encyclopédie; many of his most important works, including Jacques the Fatalist, Rameau's Nephew, Paradox of the Actor, and D'Alembert's Dream, were published only after his death.

Early life

Denis Diderot was born in Langres, Champagne. His parents were Didier Diderot, a cutler, maître coutelier, and Angélique Vigneron. Of Denis' five siblings, three survived to adulthood: Denise Diderot, their youngest brother Pierre-Didier Diderot and, their sister Angélique Diderot. Denis Diderot greatly admired his sister Denise, sometimes referring to her as "a female Socrates".

Diderot began his formal education at a Jesuit college in Langres. In 1732 he received the degree of Master of Arts from the University of Paris. He abandoned the idea of entering the clergy in 1735 and, instead, decided to study at the Paris Law Faculty. His study of law was short-lived, however, and in the early 1740s he decided to become a writer and translator. Because of his refusal to enter one of the learned professions, he was disowned by his father and, for the next ten years, he lived a bohemian existence.

In 1742 he formed a friendship with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom he met while watching games of chess and drinking coffee at the Café de la Régence. In October 1743, he further alienated his father by marrying Antoinette Champion (1710–1796), a devout Catholic. Diderot senior considered the match inappropriate, given Champion's low social standing, poor education, fatherless status, and lack of a dowry. She was about three years older than Diderot. She bore Diderot one surviving child, a girl, named Angélique, after both Diderot's dead mother and his sister. The death in 1749 of his sister Angélique, a nun, in her convent, may have affected Diderot's opinion of religion. She is assumed to have been the inspiration for his novel about a nun, La Religieuse, in which he depicts a woman who is forced to enter a convent, where she suffers at the hands of her fellow nuns.

Diderot was unfaithful to his wife, and had affairs with Anne-Gabrielle Babuty (who would marry and later divorce the artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze), Madeleine de Puisieux, Sophie Volland, and Mme de Maux (Jeanne-Catherine de Maux), to whom he wrote numerous surviving letters and who eventually left him for a younger man. Diderot's letters to Sophie Volland are known for their candor and are regarded to be "among the literary treasures of the eighteenth century".

Early works
Diderot's earliest works included a translation of Temple Stanyan's History of Greece (1743). In 1745, he published a translation of Shaftesbury's Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit, to which he had added his own "reflections". With two colleagues, François-Vincent Toussaint and Marc-Antoine Eidous, he produced a translation of Robert James's Medicinal Dictionary (1746–1748).

Philosophical Thoughts
In 1746, Diderot wrote his first original work: the Philosophical Thoughts (Pensées philosophiques). In this book, Diderot argued for a reconciliation of reason with feeling so as to establish harmony. According to Diderot, without feeling there is a detrimental effect on virtue, and no possibility of creating sublime work. However, since feeling without discipline can be destructive, reason is necessary to control feeling.

At the time Diderot wrote this book he was a deist. Hence there is a defense of deism in this book, and some arguments against atheism. The book also contains criticism of Christianity.

The Skeptic's Walk
In 1747, Diderot wrote The Skeptic's Walk (Promenade du sceptique) in which a deist, an atheist, and a pantheist have a dialogue on the nature of divinity. The deist gives the argument from design. The atheist says that the universe is better explained by physics, chemistry, matter, and motion. The pantheist says that the cosmic unity of mind and matter, which are co-eternal and comprise the universe, is God. This work remained unpublished until 1830. Accounts differ as to why. It was either because the local police, warned by the priests of another attack on Christianity, seized the manuscript, or because the authorities forced Diderot to give an undertaking that he would not publish this work.

The Indiscreet Jewels
In 1748, Diderot needed to raise money on short notice. His wife had born him a child, and his mistress Madeleine de Puisieux was making financial demands of him. At this time, Diderot had told his mistress that writing a novel was a trivial task, whereupon she challenged him to write one. As a result Diderot produced The Indiscreet Jewels (Les bijoux indiscrets). The book is about the magical ring of a Sultan that induces any woman's "discreet jewels" to confess their sexual experiences when the ring is pointed at them. In all, the ring is pointed at thirty different women in the book—usually at a dinner or a social meeting—with the Sultan typically being visible to the woman. However, since the ring has the additional property of making its owner invisible when required, a few of the sexual experiences recounted are through direct observation with the Sultan making himself invisible and placing his person in the unsuspecting woman's boudoir.

Besides the bawdiness, there are several digressions into philosophy, music, and literature in the book. In one such philosophical digression, the Sultan has a dream in which he sees a child named "Experiment" growing bigger and stronger till the child demolishes an ancient temple named "Hypothesis". The book proved to be lucrative for Diderot even though it could only be sold clandestinely. It is Diderot's most published work.

The book is believed to draw upon the 1742 libertine novel Le Sopha by Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (Crébillon fils).

Scientific work
Diderot kept writing on science in a desultory way all his life. The scientific work of which he was most proud was Memoires sur differents sujets de mathematique (1748). This work contains original ideas on acoustics, tension, air resistance, and "a project for a new organ" that could be played by all. Some of Diderot's scientific works were applauded by contemporary publications of his time such as The Gentleman's Magazine, the Journal des savants; and the Jesuit publication Journal de Trevoux, which invited more such work: "on the part of a man as clever and able as M. Diderot seems to be, of whom we should also observe that his style is as elegant, trenchant, and unaffected as it is lively and ingenious."

On the unity of nature Diderot wrote, "Without the idea of the whole, philosophy is no more," and, "Everything changes; everything passes; nothing remains but the whole." He wrote of the temporal nature of molecules, and rejected emboîtement, the view that organisms are pre-formed in an infinite regression of non-changing germs. He saw minerals and species as part of a spectrum, and he was fascinated with hermaphroditism. His answer to the universal attraction in corpuscular physics models was universal elasticity. His view of nature's flexibility foreshadows the discovery of evolution, but it is not Darwinistic in a strict sense.

Letter on the Blind
Diderot's celebrated Letter on the Blind (Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient) (1749) introduced him to the world as an original thinker. The subject is a discussion of the relation between reasoning and the knowledge acquired through perception (the five senses). The title of his book also evoked some ironic doubt about who exactly were "the blind" under discussion. In the essay, blind English mathematician Nicholas Saunderson argues that, since knowledge derives from the senses, mathematics is the only form of knowledge that both he and a sighted person can agree on. It is suggested that the blind could be taught to read through their sense of touch. (A later essay, Lettre sur les sourds et muets, considered the case of a similar deprivation in the deaf and mute.) According to Jonathan Israel, what makes the Lettre sur les aveugles so remarkable, however, is its distinct, if undeveloped, presentation of the theory of variation and natural selection.

This powerful essay, for which La Mettrie expressed warm appreciation in 1751, revolves around a remarkable deathbed scene in which a dying blind philosopher, Saunderson, rejects the arguments of a deist clergyman who endeavours to win him around to a belief in a providential God during his last hours. Saunderson's arguments are those of a neo-Spinozist Naturalist and fatalist, using a sophisticated notion of the self-generation and natural evolution of species without creation or supernatural intervention. The notion of "thinking matter" is upheld and the "argument from design" discarded (following La Mettrie) as hollow and unconvincing.

The work appeared anonymously in Paris in June 1749, and was vigorously suppressed by the authorities. Diderot, who had been under police surveillance since 1747, was swiftly identified as the author, had his manuscripts confiscated, and he was imprisoned for some months, under a lettre de cachet, on the outskirts of Paris, in the dungeons at Vincennes where he was visited almost daily by Rousseau, at the time his closest and most assiduous ally.

Voltaire wrote an enthusiastic letter to Diderot commending the Lettre and stating that he had held Diderot in high regard for a long time, to which Diderot sent a warm response. Soon after this, Diderot was arrested.

Science historian Conway Zirkle has written that Diderot was an early evolutionary thinker and noted that his passage that described natural selection was "so clear and accurate that it almost seems that we would be forced to accept his conclusions as a logical necessity even in the absence of the evidence collected since his time."

Incarceration and release
Angered by public resentment over the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the government started incarcerating many of its critics. It was decided at this time to rein in Diderot. On 23 July 1749, the governor of the Vincennes fortress instructed the police to incarcerate Diderot, and the next day he was arrested and placed in solitary confinement at Vincennes. It was at this period that Rousseau visited Diderot in prison and came out a changed man, with newfound ideas about the disadvantages of knowledge, civilization, and Enlightenment – the so-called illumination de Vincennes.

Diderot had been permitted to retain one book that he had in his possession at the time of his arrest, Paradise Lost, which he read during his incarceration. He wrote notes and annotations on the book, using a toothpick as a pen, and ink that he made by scraping slate from the walls and mixing it with wine.

In August 1749, Mme du Chatelet, presumably at Voltaire's behest, wrote to the governor of Vincennes, who was her relative, pleading for Diderot to be lodged more comfortably during his incarceration. The governor then offered Diderot access to the great halls of the Vincennes castle and the freedom to receive books and visitors providing he wrote a document of submission. On 13 August 1749, Diderot wrote to the governor:

"I admit to you ... that the Pensées, the Bijoux, and the Lettre sur les aveugles are debaucheries of the mind that escaped from me; but I can ... promise you on my honor (and I do have honor) that they will be the last, and that they are the only ones ... As for those who have taken part in the publication of these works, nothing will be hidden from you. I shall depose verbally, in the depths [secrecy] of your heart, the names both of the publishers and the printers."

On 20 August, Diderot was moved to a comfortable room in the fortess and allowed to meet visitors and walk within the gardens. On 23 August, Diderot signed another letter promising never to leave the prison without permission. On 3 November 1749, he was given his freedom. Subsequently, in 1750, he released the prospectus for the Encyclopédie.

Genesis

André le Breton, a bookseller and printer, approached Diderot with a project for the publication of a translation of Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences into French, first undertaken by the Englishman John Mills, and followed by the German Gottfried Sellius. Diderot accepted the proposal, and transformed it. He persuaded Le Breton to publish a new work, which would consolidate ideas and knowledge from the Republic of Letters. The publishers found capital for a larger enterprise than they had first planned. Jean le Rond d'Alembert was persuaded to become Diderot's colleague, and permission was procured from the government.

In 1750, an elaborate prospectus announced the project, and the first volume was published in 1751. This work was unorthodox and advanced for the time. Diderot stated that "An encyclopedia ought to make good the failure to execute such a project hitherto, and should encompass not only the fields already covered by the academies, but each and every branch of human knowledge." Comprehensive knowledge will give "the power to change men's common way of thinking." The work combined scholarship with information on trades. Diderot emphasized the abundance of knowledge within each subject area. Everyone would benefit from these insights.

Controversies
Diderot's work, however, was mired in controversy from the beginning; the project was suspended by the courts in 1752. Just as the second volume was completed, accusations arose regarding seditious content, concerning the editor's entries on religion and natural law. Diderot was detained and his house was searched for manuscripts for subsequent articles: but the search proved fruitless as no manuscripts could be found. They had been hidden in the house of an unlikely confederate—Chretien de Lamoignon Malesherbes, who originally ordered the search. Although Malesherbes was a staunch absolutist, and loyal to the monarchy—he was sympathetic to the literary project. Along with his support, and that of other well-placed influential confederates, the project resumed. Diderot returned to his efforts only to be constantly embroiled in controversy.

These twenty years were to Diderot not merely a time of incessant drudgery, but harassing persecution and desertion of friends. The ecclesiastical party detested the Encyclopédie, in which they saw a rising stronghold for their philosophic enemies. By 1757, they could endure it no longer—the subscribers had grown from 2,000 to 4,000, a measure of the growth of the work in popular influence and power. Diderot wanted the Encyclopédie to give all the knowledge of the world to the people of France. However, the Encyclopédie threatened the governing social classes of France (aristocracy) because it took for granted the justice of religious tolerance, freedom of thought, and the value of science and industry. It asserted the doctrine that the main concern of the nation's government ought to be the nation's common people. It was believed that the Encyclopédie was the work of an organized band of conspirators against society, and that the dangerous ideas they held were made truly formidable by their open publication. In 1759, the Encyclopédie was formally suppressed. The decree did not stop the work, which went on, but its difficulties increased by the necessity of being clandestine. Jean le Rond d'Alembert withdrew from the enterprise and other powerful colleagues, including Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, declined to contribute further to a book that had acquired a bad reputation.

Diderot's contribution
Diderot was left to finish the task as best he could. He wrote approximately 7,000 articles, some very slight, but many of them laborious, comprehensive, and long. He damaged his eyesight correcting proofs and editing the manuscripts of less scrupulous contributors. He spent his days at workshops, mastering manufacturing processes, and his nights writing what he had learned during the day. He was incessantly harassed by threats of police raids. The last copies of the first volume were issued in 1765.

In 1764, when his immense work was drawing to an end, he encountered a crowning mortification: he discovered that the bookseller, Le Breton, fearing the government's displeasure, had struck out from the proof sheets, after they had left Diderot's hands, all passages that he considered too dangerous. "He and his printing-house overseer", writes Furbank, "had worked in complete secrecy, and had moreover deliberately destroyed the author's original manuscript so that the damage could not be repaired." The monument to which Diderot had given the labor of twenty long and oppressive years was irreparably mutilated and defaced. It was 12 years, in 1772, before the subscribers received the final 28 folio volumes of the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers since the first volume had been published.

When Diderot's work on the Encyclopédie project came to an end in 1765, he expressed concerns to his friends that the twenty-five years he had spent on the project had been wasted.

Mature works
Although the Encyclopédie was Diderot's most monumental product, he was the author of many other works that sowed nearly every intellectual field with new and creative ideas. Diderot's writing ranges from a graceful trifle like the Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre (Regrets for my Old Dressing Gown) up to the heady D'Alembert's Dream (Le Rêve de d'Alembert) (composed 1769), a philosophical dialogue in which he plunges into the depths of the controversy as to the ultimate constitution of matter and the meaning of life. Jacques le fataliste (written between 1765 and 1780, but not published until 1792 in German and 1796 in French) is similar to Tristram Shandy and The Sentimental Journey in its challenge to the conventional novel's structure and content.

La Religieuse (The Nun or Memoirs of a Nun)
La Religieuse was a novel that claimed to show the corruption of the Catholic Church's institutions.

Plot
The novel began not as a work for literary consumption, but as an elaborate practical joke aimed at luring the Marquis de Croismare, a companion of Diderot's, back to Paris. The Nun is set in the 18th century, that is, contemporary France. Suzanne Simonin is an intelligent and sensitive sixteen-year-old French girl who is forced against her will into a Catholic convent by her parents. Suzanne's parents initially inform her that she is being sent to the convent for financial reasons. However, while in the convent, she learns that she is actually there because she is an illegitimate child, as her mother committed adultery. By sending Suzanne to the convent, her mother thought she could make amends for her sins by using her daughter as a sacrificial offering.

At the convent, Suzanne suffers humiliation, harassment and violence because she refuses to make the vows of the religious community. She eventually finds companionship with the Mother Superior, Sister de Moni, who pities Suzanne's anguish. After Sister de Moni's death, the new Mother Superior, Sister Sainte-Christine, does not share the same empathy for Suzanne that her predecessor had, blaming Suzanne for the death of Sister de Moni. Suzanne is physically and mentally harassed by Sister Sainte-Christine, almost to the point of death.

Suzanne contacts her lawyer, Monsieur Manouri, who attempts to legally free her from her vows. Manouri manages to have Suzanne transferred to another convent, Sainte-Eutrope. At the new convent, the Mother Superior is revealed to be a lesbian, and she grows affectionate towards Suzanne. The Mother Superior attempts to seduce Suzanne, but her innocence and chastity eventually drives the Mother Superior to insanity, leading to her death.

Suzanne escapes the Sainte-Eutrope convent using the help of a priest. Following her liberation, she lives in fear of being captured and taken back to the convent as she awaits the help from Diderot's friend the Marquis de Croismare.

Analysis
Diderot's novel was not aimed at condemning Christianity as such but at criticizing cloistered religious life. In Diderot's telling, some critics have claimed, the Church is depicted as fostering a hierarchical society, exemplified in the power dynamic between the Mother Superior and the girls in the convent, forced as they are against their will to take the vows and endure what is to them the intolerable life of the convent. On this view, the subjection of the unwilling young women to convent life dehumanized them by repressing their sexuality. Moreover, their plight would have been all the more oppressive since it should be remembered that in France at this period, religious vows were recognized, regulated and enforced not only by the Church but also by the civil authorities. Some broaden their interpretation to suggest that Diderot was out to expose more general victimization of women by the Catholic Church, that forced them to accept the fate imposed upon them by a hierarchical society.

Posthumous publication
Although The Nun was completed in about 1780, the work was not published until 1796, after Diderot's death.

Rameau's Nephew
The dialogue Rameau's Nephew (French: Le Neveu de Rameau) is a "farce-tragedy" reminiscent of the Satires of Horace, a favorite classical author of Diderot's whose lines "Vertumnis, quotquot sunt, natus iniquis" ("Born under (the influence of) the unfavorable (gods) Vertumnuses, however many they are") appear as epigraph. According to Nicholas Cronk, Rameau's Nephew is "arguably the greatest work of the French Enlightenment's greatest writer."

Synopsis
The narrator in the book recounts a conversation with Jean-François Rameau, nephew of the famous composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. The nephew composes and teaches music with some success but feels disadvantaged by his name and is jealous of his uncle. Eventually he sinks into an indolent and debauched state. After his wife's death, he loses all self-esteem and his brusque manners result in him being ostracized by former friends. A character profile of the nephew is now sketched by Diderot: a man who was once wealthy and comfortable with a pretty wife, who is now living in poverty and decadence, shunned by his friends. And yet this man retains enough of his past to analyze his despondency philosophically and maintains his sense of humor. Essentially he believes in nothing—not in religion, nor in morality; nor in the Roussean view about nature being better than civilization since in his opinion every species in nature consumes one another. He views the same process at work in the economic world where men consume each other through the legal system. The wise man, according to the nephew, will consequently practice hedonism:

"Hurrah for wisdom and philosophy!—the wisdom of Solomon: to drink good wines, gorge on choice foods, tumble pretty women, sleep on downy beds; outside of that, all is vanity."

The dialogue ends with Diderot calling the nephew a wastrel, a coward, and a glutton devoid of spiritual values to which the nephew replies: "I believe you are right."

Analysis
Diderot's intention in writing the dialogue—whether as a satire on contemporary manners, a reduction of the theory of self-interest to an absurdity, the application of irony to the ethics of ordinary convention, a mere setting for a discussion about music, or a vigorous dramatic sketch of a parasite and a human original—is disputed. In political terms it explores "the bipolarisation of the social classes under absolute monarchy," and insofar as its protagonist demonstrates how the servant often manipulates the master, Le Neveu de Rameau can be seen to anticipate Hegel's master–slave dialectic.

Posthumous publication
The publication history of the Nephew is circuitous. Written between 1761 and 1774, Diderot never saw the work through to publication during his lifetime, and apparently did not even share it with his friends. After Diderot's death, a copy of the text reached Schiller, who gave it to Goethe, who, in 1805, translated the work into German. Goethe's translation entered France, and was retranslated into French in 1821. Another copy of the text was published in 1823, but it had been expurgated by Diderot's daughter prior to publication. The original manuscript was only found in 1891.

Visual arts
Diderot's most intimate friend was the philologist Friedrich Melchior Grimm. They were brought together by their common friend at that time, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In 1753, Grimm began writing a newsletter, the La Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, which he would send to various high personages in Europe.

In 1759, Grimm asked Diderot to report on the biennial art exhibitions in the Louvre for the Correspondance. Diderot reported on the Salons between 1759 and 1771 and again in 1775 and 1781. Diderot's reports would become "the most celebrated contributions to La Correspondance."

According to Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Diderot's reports initiated the French into a new way of laughing, and introduced people to the mystery and purport of colour by ideas. "Before Diderot", Anne Louise Germaine de Staël wrote, "I had never seen anything in pictures except dull and lifeless colours; it was his imagination that gave them relief and life, and it is almost a new sense for which I am indebted to his genius".

Diderot had appended an Essai sur la peinture to his report on the 1765 Salon in which he expressed his views on artistic beauty. Goethe described the Essai sur la peinture as "a magnificent work; it speaks even more usefully to the poet than to the painter, though for the painter too it is a torch of blazing illumination".

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) was Diderot's favorite contemporary artist. Diderot appreciated Greuze's sentimentality, and more particularly Greuze's portrayals of his wife who had once been Diderot's mistress.

Theatre
Diderot wrote sentimental plays, Le Fils naturel (1757) and Le Père de famille (1758), accompanying them with essays on theatrical theory and practice, including "Les Entretiens sur Le Fils Naturel" (Conversations on The Natural Son), in which he announced the principles of a new drama: the 'serious genre', a realistic midpoint between comedy and tragedy that stood in opposition to the stilted conventions of the classical French stage. In 1758, Diderot introduced the concept of the fourth wall, the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box set in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. He also wrote Paradoxe sur le comédien (Paradox of the Actor), written between 1770 and 1778 but first published after his death in 1830, which is a dramatic essay elucidating a theory of acting in which it is argued that great actors do not experience the emotions they are displaying. That essay is also of note for being where the term l'esprit de l'escalier (or l'esprit d'escalier) comes from. It is a French term used in English for the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late.

Journey to Russia

When the Russian Empress Catherine the Great heard that Diderot was in need of money, she arranged to buy his library and appoint him caretaker of it until his death, at a salary of 1,000 livres per year. She even paid him 50 years salary in advance. Although Diderot hated traveling, he was obliged to visit her.

On 9 October 1773, he reached Saint Petersburg, met Catherine the next day and they had several discussions on various subjects. During his five-month stay at her court, he met her almost every day. During these conversations, he would later state, they spoke 'man to man'.

He would occasionally make his point by slapping her thighs. In a letter to Madame Geoffrin, Catherine wrote:

"Your Diderot is an extraordinary man. I emerge from interviews with him with my thighs bruised and quite black. I have been obliged to put a table between us to protect myself and my members." One of the topics discussed was Diderot's ideas about how to transform Russia into a utopia. In a letter to Comte de Ségur, the Empress wrote that if she followed Diderot's advice, chaos would ensue in her kingdom.

Back in France
When returning, Diderot asked the Empress for 1,500 rubles as reimbursement for his trip. She gave him 3,000 rubles, an expensive ring, and an officer to escort him back to Paris. He wrote a eulogy in her honor upon reaching Paris.

In 1766, when Catherine heard that Diderot had not received his annual fee for editing the Encyclopédie (an important source of income for the philosopher), she arranged for him to receive a massive sum of 50,000 livres as an advance for his services as her librarian.

In July 1784, upon hearing that Diderot was in poor health, Catherine arranged for him to move into a luxurious suite in the Rue de Richelieu. Diderot died two weeks after moving there—on 31 July 1784.

Among Diderot's last works were notes "On the Instructions of her Imperial Majesty...for the Drawing up of Laws". This commentary on Russia included replies to some arguments Catherine had made in the Nakaz. Diderot wrote that Catherine was certainly despotic, due to circumstances and training, but was not inherently tyrannical. Thus, if she wished to destroy despotism in Russia, she should abdicate her throne and destroy anyone who tries to revive the monarchy. She should publicly declare that "there is no true sovereign other than the nation, and there can be no true legislator other than the people." She should create a new Russian legal code establishing an independent legal framework and starting with the text: "We the people, and we the sovereign of this people, swear conjointly these laws, by which we are judged equally." In the Nakaz, Catherine had written: "It is for legislation to follow the spirit of the nation." Diderot's rebuttal stated that it is for legislation to make the spirit of the nation. For instance, he argued, it is not appropriate to make public executions unnecessarily horrific.

Ultimately, Diderot decided not to send these notes to Catherine; however, they were delivered to her with his other papers after he died. When she read them, she was furious and commented that they were an incoherent gibberish devoid of prudence, insight, and verisimilitude.

Philosophy
In his youth, Diderot was originally a follower of Voltaire and his deist Anglomanie, but gradually moved away from this line of thought towards materialism and atheism, a move which was finally realised in 1747 in the philosophical debate in the second part of his The Skeptic's Walk (1747). Diderot opposed mysticism and occultism, which were highly prevalent in France at the time he wrote, and believed religious truth claims must fall under the domain of reason, not mystical experience or esoteric secrets. However, Diderot showed some interest in the work of Paracelsus. He was "a philosopher in whom all the contradictions of the time struggle with one another" (Rosenkranz).

In his 1754 book On the interpretation of Nature, Diderot expounded on his views about nature, evolution, materialism, mathematics, and experimental science. It is speculated that Diderot may have contributed to his friend Baron d'Holbach's 1770 book The System of Nature. Diderot had enthusiastically endorsed the book stating that: "What I like is a philosophy clear, definite, and frank, such as you have in the System of Nature. The author is not an atheist on one page and a deist on another. His philosophy is all of one piece."

In conceiving the Encyclopédie, Diderot had thought of the work as a fight on behalf of posterity and had expressed confidence that posterity would be grateful for his effort. According to Diderot, "posterity is for the philosopher what the 'other world' is for the man of religion."

According to Andrew S. Curran, the main questions of Diderot's thought are the following :
 * Why be moral in a world without god?
 * How should we appreciate art?
 * What are we and where do we come from?
 * What are sex and love?
 * How can a philosopher intervene in political affairs?

Death and burial
Diderot died of pulmonary thrombosis in Paris on 31 July 1784, and was buried in the city's Église Saint-Roch. His heirs sent his vast library to Catherine II, who had it deposited at the National Library of Russia. He has several times been denied burial in the Panthéon with other French notables.

Diderot's remains were unearthed by grave robbers in 1793, leaving his corpse on the church's floor. His remains were then presumably transferred to a mass grave by the authorities.

Appreciation and influence

Marmontel and Henri Meister commented on the great pleasure of having intellectual conversations with Diderot. Morellet, a regular attendee at D'Holbach's salon, wrote: "It is there that I heard...Diderot treat questions of philosophy, art, or literature, and by his wealth of expression, fluency, and inspired appearance, hold our attention for a long stretch of time." Diderot's contemporary, and rival, Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Confessions that after a few centuries Diderot would be accorded as much respect by posterity as was given to Plato and Aristotle. In Germany, Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing expressed admiration for Diderot's writings, Goethe pronouncing Diderot's Rameau's Nephew to be "the classical work of an outstanding man" and that "Diderot is Diderot, a unique individual; whoever carps at him and his affairs is a philistine."

As atheism fell out of favor during the French Revolution, Diderot was vilified and considered responsible for the excessive persecution of the clergy.

In the next century, Diderot was admired by Balzac, Delacroix, Stendhal, Zola, and Schopenhauer. According to Comte, Diderot was the foremost intellectual in an exciting age. Historian Michelet described him as "the true Prometheus" and stated that Diderot's ideas would continue to remain influential long into the future. Marx chose Diderot as his "favourite prose-writer."

Modern tributes

Otis Fellows and Norman Torrey have described Diderot as "the most interesting and provocative figure of the French eighteenth century."

In 1993, American writer Cathleen Schine published Rameau's Niece, a satire of academic life in New York that took as its premise a woman's research into an (imagined) 18th-century pornographic parody of Diderot's Rameau's Nephew. The book was praised by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times as "a nimble philosophical satire of the academic mind" and "an enchanting comedy of modern manners."

French author Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt wrote a play titled Le Libertin (The Libertine) which imagines a day in Diderot's life including a fictional sitting for a woman painter which becomes sexually charged but is interrupted by the demands of editing the Encyclopédie. It was first staged at Paris' Théâtre Montparnasse in 1997 starring Bernard Giraudeau as Diderot and Christiane Cohendy as Madame Therbouche and was well received by critics.

In 2013, the 300th anniversary of Diderot's birth, his hometown of Langres held a series of events in his honor and produced an audio tour of the town highlighting places that were part of Diderot's past, including the remains of the convent where his sister Angélique took her vows. On 6 October 2013, a museum of the Enlightenment focusing on Diderot's contributions to the movement, the Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot, was inaugurated in Langres.

The French government considered memorializing the 300th anniversary of his birth, but this did not come to pass.

title: Denis Diderot


text:
Discovery of chemical elements

The discoveries of the 118 chemical elements known to exist as of 2024 are presented here in chronological order. The elements are listed generally in the order in which each was first defined as the pure element, as the exact date of discovery of most elements cannot be accurately determined. There are plans to synthesize more elements, and it is not known how many elements are possible.

Each element's name, atomic number, year of first report, name of the discoverer, and notes related to the discovery are listed.

Modern discoveries
For 18th-century discoveries, around the time that Antoine Lavoisier first questioned the phlogiston theory, the recognition of a new "earth" has been regarded as being equivalent to the discovery of a new element (as was the general practice then). For some elements (e.g. Be, B, Na, Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Mn, Co, Ni, Zr, Mo), this presents further difficulties as their compounds were widely known since medieval or even ancient times, even though the elements themselves were not. Since the true nature of those compounds was sometimes only gradually discovered, it is sometimes very difficult to name one specific discoverer. In such cases the first publication on their chemistry is noted, and a longer explanation given in the notes.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Discovery of chemical elements


text:
Talk:Discovery of chemical elements

lead and tin
I took this out : Lead was first purified and clearly differentiated from tin by medieval Middle Eastern chemists as lead and tin were purified and clearly differentiated  from at least Mesopotamian times. J8079s (talk) 02:57, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's a cite Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries: The Archaeological Evidence By Peter Roger Stuart Moorey Published by EISENBRAUNS, 1999 ISBN 1575060426 J8079s (talk) 03:09, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

What is this supposed to mean ?
"The elements are listed generally in the order in which each was first defined as the pure element, as the exact date of discovery of most elements cannot be accurately defined."

What is this misconceived sentence supposed to mean? What does "defined as the pure element" mean ?? There is a problem with the word "defined". You can infer the existence of, discover, extract, measure, determine the properties of a chemical element,  but you cannot "define" it. And what is a "pure element" ? All elements are "pure". Is the sentence intended to mean,  the preparation of a sample of the element which is not mixed or compounded with any other element ? To what degree of purity ? For many elements, preparation of "pure" ( uncontaminated ) samples occured decades after the existence of the element was scientifically conclusive.Eregli bob (talk) 04:09, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Gold and Queen Zer
Queen Zer I suggest never existed. There are lots of websites that mention her and her gold or turquoise burial goods, but many are plainly humbug, for example many date her to 5500 BC. The earliest mummies are no earlier than about 3300 BC. I can find this reference to a queen Zur, wife of an Athotis.

I suggest that Zer is a old variant of Djer(Aka Athothis), and hence not a queen. Gold was found associated with Djer, see for example. This site purports to have a picture of the gold and turqoise bracelet found on a human wrist at tomb O, identified as the tomb of Djer. I'll mark the article as "dubious".

"widely known"
In the "Recorded discoveries" table is a column headed "Isolation (widely known)". I have no clue what this means. What is it that is "widely known"? The element? The person who isolated it? The fact that it was isolated? 86.160.83.63 (talk) 20:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Smelting of iron / iron age

 * "The discovery of smelting around 3000 BC led to the start of the iron age around 1200 BC"

It needs to be clarified whether "discovery of smelting" refer to the smelting of iron or to the general technique. If the former, then why was there a 1800 year gap? If the latter, then it contradicts the statement earlier that "lead smelting began at least 9000 years ago". 86.181.201.159 (talk) 13:43, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Possible mistake
When referring to Carbon, "Samaritans" are mentioned. This might be a mistake. Perhaps, Sumerians are meant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.148.29.164 (talk) 10:57, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I have improved the text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.148.29.164 (talk) 15:14, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Not a good entry title
"chemical elements discoveries" is not idiomatic English. I would say it requires an apostrophe ("chemical elements' discoveries", i.e. the discoveries of the elements) or, better, should be changed to "chemical element discoveries". 86.135.115.218 (talk) 10:57, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Platinum
Platinum was known to native Americans before Columbus; shouldn't it be placed in the first table with a note about European discovery? - Soerfm (talk) 14:40, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ (unfortunately almost nine years late). Double sharp (talk) 13:56, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Bismuth
Why Bismuth is in the unrecorded list when it's clear steated that it was discovered in 1753?OTAVIO1981 (talk) 15:32, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

 * I was wondering the same thing. I've moved it under recorded discoveries. Skydiver (talk) 18:42, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

 * Probably because of this. It was identified as a distinct element in 1753 but was known and used well before that. In that respect it is a bit like Zn. Double sharp (talk) 09:42, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I've added the Inca use of bismuth in the article. Double sharp (talk) 19:17, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was moved. --BDD (talk) 20:01, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Timeline of chemical elements discoveries → Timeline of chemical element discoveries – Per comment above, current title is not proper English. 86.146.106.166 (talk) 03:14, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Support – This should be a speedy move, in my opinion. --Article editor (talk) 04:14, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Support. I agree that this ought to be an uncontroversial speedy move. 168.12.253.66 (talk) 20:54, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Chromium
The current entry for 'chromium' under 'Unrecorded discoveries' is inconsistent with the Chromium article which states: "'Chromium oxide was used by the Chinese in the Qin dynasty over 2,000 years ago to coat metal weapons found with the Terracotta Army. Chromium was discovered as an element after it came to the attention of the Western world in the red crystalline mineral crocoite (lead(II) chromate), discovered in 1761 and initially used as a pigment. Louis Nicolas Vauquelin first isolated chromium metal from this mineral in 1797.'" --Kevjonesin (talk) 09:42, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * So the contradiction is with

"'Chromium...Before 1 CE...Terracotta Army...China...Found coating various weapons in China because of its high strength and corrosion resistance'"
 * with the reference Cotterell, Maurice. (2004). The Terracotta Warriors: The Secret Codes of the Emperor's Army. Rochester: Bear and Company. ISBN 1-59143-033-X. Page 102. Terracotta Army also says "chromium dioxide", using the same reference and others. Siuenti (talk) 12:38, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, the Chinese Wikipedia entry for chromium says "discovered in 1797". Siuenti (talk) 12:52, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

 * Thanks for checking the Chinese Wikipedia, Siuenti.

 * It seems to me that the presence of 'chromium (di)oxide' on ancient artifacts is likely a weak, if not outright spurious, indicator of an early awareness of chromium as a distinct element. In light of which the chromium entry might better reside alongside other existing eighteenth-century (1700s) entries.

 * I did some 'snooping' as well. Found a chinahistoryforum.com entry examining the question in—fairly extensive—detail:
 * "It seems clear the swords are not ‘chromed’ in the sense we understand it today, nor was the identified material used to coat them chromium as such, but a reduction of chromium in combination with other material (into Potassium chromate) and it may be that chromium was created in a reduction process rather than actual isolated."
 * Much that is posted in casual articles about the weapons and their 'coating' may well be repeatedly recycled media simplifications/exaggerations. I'm thinking that unless some reputable scientific/academic source can be found explicitly attributing knowledge of elemental chromium to the ancient Chinese it would be best to categorize the chromium entry by the known 1700s dates.

 * --Kevjonesin (talk) 13:39, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Wait, the ancient Chinese Cr claim is back? I could've sworn we'd gotten rid of it some time ago: it seems to keep coming back for some reason. I've taken it back out and replaced the Vauquelin entry for Cr (which is indisputable). Double sharp (talk) 14:38, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Zinc
When I typed in "When was Zinc discovered" in Google, it was discovered in 1746. But in the article, it was discovered before the Middle Ages. Should I change Zinc to "Discovered to Middle Ages?" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Erbium Is Awesome (talk • contribs) 22:49, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Rasaratna Samuccaya
He was not a person. This is the title of a book. Double sharp (talk) 04:22, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 5 one external links on Timeline of chemical element discoveries. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080917214726/https://www.rameria.com:80/inglese/history.html to http://www.rameria.com/inglese/history.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080916201636/https://georgiagulfsulfur.com:80/history.htm to http://www.georgiagulfsulfur.com/history.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061230040713/https://periodic.lanl.gov:80/elements/22.html to http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/22.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130604212956/http://chemeducator.org/sbibs/s0010005/spapers/1050387gk.htm to http://chemeducator.org/sbibs/s0010005/spapers/1050387gk.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20091221072744/https://www.iupac.org:80/web/nt/2009-06-26_Uub to http://www.iupac.org/web/nt/2009-06-26_Uub

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 19:11, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Antimony
I find the "in widespread use" for this element and the source given rather questionable. As far as I can gather, the sulfide (stibnite, Sb2S3), was used (in cosmetics) but not known as an element or metal until much later. The "in widespread use" bit implies the element, not a compound. Kleuske (talk) 23:06, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Moscovium - 2010? Really?
A lot of earlier sources (and even the Wikiepdia article on it) claim 2003, but why so recent here?

Same thing for the others. I'm sure flerovium was 1999 and livermorium was 2000.

Vandalism? Or something further?

8.40.151.110 (talk) 23:16, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
 * IUPAC. The 2003 discovery did not meet IUPAC's criteria; the 2010 discovery of 289,290Mc as daughters of 293,294Ts did. Same with Fl and Lv; the initial discoveries did not meet IUPAC's criteria, but the later experiments did. Double sharp (talk) 03:02, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I changed it on the element articles for Nh–Og, this time with hidden comments to deter others who might not be aware of this from changing it back. You can see all the IUPAC reports linked at WikiProject_Elements/Links. Double sharp (talk) 03:07, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * What about, say, Ds, Rg, and Cn? Were those actually later or no? 8.40.151.110 (talk) 01:53, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * No; for those, the original discoveries were confirmed. The IUPAC technical reports are here: Ds, Rg, and Cn. (Although arguably since the 1966 date from IUPAC for nobelium is from the date of publication of the papers, Ds and Rg should really say 1995 instead of 1994; I will change that.) Double sharp (talk) 04:43, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Note that after the IUPAC reports accepting the discoveries of moscovium and tennessine, there have appeared new articles noting some incongruencies in the decay chains (one, two). Burzuchius and I have remarked on this at Talk:Tennessine): the nuclides involved are probably still Mc and Ts isotopes and their daughters, but they might not be the ones claimed, and some of the more removed daughters may have been misidentified more significantly (the extremely short half-life of 277Mt to spontaneous fission that is claimed is rather unusual given its odd proton that should hinder this, but if it is not the daughter of 281Rg but is instead the granddaughter of 280Rg via 280Ds, then it would make perfect sense as the even-even 276Hs). So it is plausible that in the future IUPAC will push back the discovery date even further, when future studies confirm these two elements beyond all reasonable doubt. (The names have already been officially assigned and will not change even if that happens, as it did with nobelium.)

It is honestly rather a pity that IUPAC has not commented on the discoveries of the first hundred elements. Different sources often give slightly different dates for some of them, and there are quite a few truly controversial cases such as lutetium and actinium. Double sharp (talk) 04:54, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

 * The articles for Ds and Rg need to be updated as well. I see how Lu and Ac could be controversial. 8.40.151.110 (talk) 22:15, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

P.S. The reason I chose this option is that otherwise it gets difficult to explain Nh. If you say Mc was discovered in 2003, then so was Nh, the year before the RIKEN team saw its first event, and so JINR should be the discoverers; but then it gets named Nh by RIKEN instead. Maybe rewriting it like Lu would be better. Similarly I'd add a note that Fl, Lv, and Og were discovered earlier but only published a bit later and recognised by IUPAC in even later experiments. But then if you use the earliest experiments for Fl and Lv the difficulty is that these seem to have undergone electron capture along the way, which would move forward the discovery of Nh; I think we would need to rewrite that like Pa.

All right, I seem to have convinced myself that it would work fairly well! So I guess I'll do it to avoid this confusion. Double sharp (talk) 03:26, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Timeline of chemical element discoveries. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070108015008/http://neon.mems.cmu.edu/cramb/Processing/history.html to http://neon.mems.cmu.edu/cramb/Processing/history.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070115042236/http://www.ec.gc.ca/MERCURY/EN/bf.cfm to http://www.ec.gc.ca/MERCURY/EN/bf.cfm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120309030116/http://www.chem.shef.ac.uk/chm131-2001/chb01jms/caesium.html to http://www.chem.shef.ac.uk/chm131-2001/chb01jms/caesium.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081003153044/http://www.maik.ru/abstract/radchem/0/radchem0535_abstract.pdf to http://www.maik.ru/abstract/radchem/0/radchem0535_abstract.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 08:08, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Last stable element to be discovered
This article claims that "Hafnium was the last stable element to be discovered." The article on Hafnium calls it the penultimate stable element to be discovered. The article on Rhenium claims it to be the last stable one. I have no idea what's correct, just trying to point out the inconsistencies.--37.201.181.76 (talk) 12:52, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Re was discovered in 1908 by Ogawa, but at the time the discovery was not recognised. In the meantime Hf was discovered, and so when Re was rediscovered in 1925 it looked like it was the last. I'll fix the Hf and Re articles. Double sharp (talk) 23:31, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Question about As, Sb, Zn, Bi
They seem to have been discovered after classical times (or else why wouldn't they be "planetary metals"?) but before phosphorus. Since the discovery of phosphorus is famous as the first one recorded I would imagine arsenic, antimony, zinc, and bismuth as "unrecorded medieval discoveries" but I can't find a source that really makes sense of that... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:71BA:CFD0:BDF2:8137 (talk) 16:55, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It is hard to define what a discovery is before the the modern conception of a chemical element was in force. Zinc, antimony, and bismuth were known for a long time but were not recognised as distinct metals until later. Double sharp (talk) 16:01, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It's murky, yeah. I hope I have done justice to the antimony and arsenic entries. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 18:49, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

P.S. even Co was called a semi-metal upon discovery. :) Double sharp (talk) 08:26, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Should Pd be 1802, and question about Mc, Ts, and Og
According to this it's possible that Pd should be 1802: http://www.vanderkrogt.net/elements/element.php?sym=Pd

Also, I've seen some sources claiming 2005 for Og and 2009 for Mc and Ts. Is that when the first events were seen? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:B1FB:9425:19EF:D9E4 (talk) 14:54, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It's complicated. Wollaston discovered the metal in 1802 (we know that from his lab book) and named it palladium the same year, but he only published the discovery (most unconventionally by offering samples which he had purified for sale in a Soho shop) in 1803. He first published on palladium traditionally in 1804 (although the paper was on rhodium, he mentioned palladium several times) and only disclosed that he had been the discoverer of palladium in an 1805 paper. As such, one needs to define what exactly one means by a "discovery", and then we need to remember that there is no definition that will apply equally well to 1669 (phosphorus) and 2009 (tennessine).
 * As for the superheavies: the first atom of oganesson was synthesised in 2002, but the discovery was not announced externally because its decay energy was the same as that of 212mPo, a common unwanted side product in experiments aimed at producing superheavy elements. As such the 249Cf+48Ca experiment was rerun in 2005, when two more atoms of 294Og were made, and publication occurred in 2006 (including both the 2002 and the 2005 data). The first atoms of 293Ts were certainly produced between July and October 2009 (see the discovery paper) and I have changed tennessine accordingly to 2009; moscovium on the other hand was first produced in 2003 in the 243Am+48Ca reaction, although the IUPAC–IUPAP JWP only recognised its production as the daughter of tennessine in 2009. Since we are now going by dates of first generally accepted production rather than waiting for the JWP announcements, I've retained 2003 for moscovium. Nihonium is then treated as a case of roughly contemporarous independent discoveries (kind of like how bromine is treated now). Double sharp (talk) 15:55, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Question about Si
Did Berzelius actually think he had discovered it rather than simply isolating it? It's mentioned in works of his from before 1823... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:C95:5EFB:69C9:5AB5 (talk) 12:20, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Depends how you look at it. By modern standards he was the discoverer, as no one before him had successfully isolated it; whether he thought of himself as such is quite another matter (you can read his original paper here in English and here in Swedish). Certainly fluorine was often mentioned in the literature before Moissan isolated it in 1886. It is fairly difficult to be consistent in such a list because we then have to deal with uranium: Klaproth thought there was a new element in the mineral he was examining, and he was right, but he claimed to have isolated it, and in that he was wrong. Yet he is pretty much universally acclaimed as its discoverer, and not Péligot. Double sharp (talk) 15:05, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I would say the discoverer would be the first person to recognize the existence of the new element. How could F have been included in the first periodic table if it wasn't discovered until 1886? If we're treating "earths/radicals" as their component elements, then Na and K could possibly be 1758, F 1771, Ca ?1755, and B, Al, and Si also in the 1700's. I know the theory of combustion wasn't put forth until the 1770's–80's, but it just doesn't make sense to me that Na, K, F, Ca, B, Al, and Si would be discovered so long after Y. I also tried to use 1808 for Al, Si, Be, and Zr (from Humphry Davy's paper naming them) but I was called out on it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:C95:5EFB:69C9:5AB5 (talk) 16:58, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Does this help with regard to Si, Al, Zr, Be, and Y? https://books.google.com/books?id=TPY4AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA135&dq=ittrium+1808&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij3PbYl5_aAhUGxYMKHeiWBSsQuwUITDAG#v=onepage&q=ittrium%201808&f=false — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:C95:5EFB:69C9:5AB5 (talk) 23:40, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Let me know what you think of this suggestion, pulled from the book I linked to above:
 * Potassium – Davy 1807
 * Sodium – Davy 1807
 * Calcium – Davy 1808
 * Barium – Davy 1808
 * Strontium – Davy 1808
 * Magnesium – Davy 1808
 * Yttrium – Davy 1808 (isol. Mosander 1843)
 * Beryllium – Davy 1808 (isol. Wöhler and Bussy 1828)
 * Aluminum – Davy 1808 (isol. Ørsted 1825)
 * Zirconium – Davy 1808 (isol. Berzelius 1824)
 * Silicon – Berzelius and Davy 1808 (isol. Berzelius 1823)
 * Boron – Gay-Lussac & Thénard 1808 (isol. Davy 1808)
 * Fluorine – Ampère 1810 (isol. Moissan 1886) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:C95:5EFB:69C9:5AB5 (talk) 01:28, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Going that way, wouldn't Al have to be 1787 and B and F 1789 (Lavoisier, mentioned in the article)? I think all this sort of thing is quite logical but that it can get us fairly far afield from the general consensus of reliable sources is (which is fairly inconsistent). We'd have to ask ourselves:
 * Is it a discovery if somebody mistakes a compound for the new element? (Uranium.)
 * Is it a discovery if somebody finds the element, but thinks it is a compound? (Chlorine.)
 * Is it a discovery if somebody finds the element but has by modern standards a completely wrong understanding of what it is? (Nitrogen and oxygen.)
 * Is it a discovery if someone predicts that a new element must be there, but has no means of finding it, but the new element becomes part of accepted theoretical chemistry anyway? (Not only Davy with Al and others, but also Mendeleev for Sc, Ga, Ge, and many others.)
 * Is it a discovery if evidence is presented for a new element but chemical isolation is not done, either due to location (helium) or short half-life (oganesson)?
 * Is it a discovery if someone correctly thinks there is a new element there but mistakenly thinks he has isolated it when he has not? (Urbain's claim for lutetium.)
 * Is it a discovery if someone claims to have found a new element, and was widely accepted as a discoverer, but later advances in chemistry shows that he cannot have found that element, but really found a different element which he did not claim? (Debierne's claim for actinium, which was probably protactinium; Ogawa's claim for nipponium, which he thought was eka-manganese but we now know was probably dvi-manganese.)
 * Is it a discovery if someone claims to have found a new element, but his claim is rejected, only to be reevaluated later thanks to advances in chemistry? (For some time there was doubt about polonium as an element.)
 * Is it a discovery if someone claims to have discovered a new element, was probably correct in hindsight, but he only found really convincing evidence for it later? What year should such a situation be placed under? (Lawrencium and flerovium.)
 * Trying to provide one-size-fits-all answers to these questions would provide interesting results, but as the TWG alluded to, absolute priority tends to mean absolute injustice. Really, this whole list exists only because of the tradition that the discoverer names an element. I think the best way to deal with it is just to follow the consensus of historians (Mary Elvira Weeks is an excellent start) and put enough explanatory information for readers to make up their own minds. Double sharp (talk) 02:11, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I would say yes for U and no for the others (Be, Zr, Sr, Y, Ba, Mg, and possibly others), but that one is a little confusing.
 * Yes.
 * Yes.
 * If the evidence is from the properties of its compounds (F, Al, Si, etc.) and not purely theoretical.
 * Yes.
 * Yes.
 * Unless they are definitively disproven if they are still widely accepted as the discoverer; not if they retracted their claim.
 * Unless the discoverer him/herself rejects the claim.
 * I'd keep the earlier year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:C95:5EFB:69C9:5AB5 (talk) 02:36, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Reasonable answers, even if not all sources would agree with them. Anyway, getting back to the point, we would need to push things back even further, because of this 1787 comment from Lavoisier: "We are probably only acquainted as yet with a part of the metallic substances existing in nature, as all those which have a stronger affinity to oxygen than carbon possesses, are incapable, hitherto, of being reduced to a metallic state, and consequently, being only presented to our observation under the form of oxyds, are confounded with earths. It is extremely probable that barytes, which we have just now arranged with earths, is in this situation; for in many experiments it exhibits properties nearly approaching to those of metallic bodies. It is even possible that all the substances we call earths may be only metallic oxyds, irreducible by any hitherto known process." He was discussing the "earths" he had listed, and from that list we would end up having to give him credit for discovering Mg, Al, Si, Ca, and Ba; then Davy would have named them (including Al and Si, which he could not isolate), and their isolation would come even later. Similarly Lavoisier's mention of radical boracique and radical fluorique rather implies by these standards that he discovered boron and fluorine. Double sharp (talk) 02:50, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * P.S. I must admit that I'm not sure what you mean for #7. Using Debierne's example again, he claimed the discovery of actinium and today is still usually recognised as such, but the chemistry he recorded for it is wholly inconsistent with that known for actinium suggests that what he had at first was really what we now know as protactinium. Is it reasonable to credit him as the discoverer of Ac? Is it reasonable to credit him as the discoverer of Pa? This is the kind of difficulty I am talking about. Double sharp (talk) 06:16, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * 1787 for Mg, Al, Si, Ca, and Ba and 1789 for B and F actually make sense, especially if we're using 1794 for the rather rare and obscure Y. That said, the date that Davy named them still makes a lot of sense too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:75D7:1FB0:D1AB:1E30 (talk) 17:08, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Yttrium isn't that rare: it's more common than lead. I don't think it's that remarkable that common-sounding elements got discovered later since they are more difficult to isolate, even if you know that they are there. Double sharp (talk) 23:49, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * But if you know they're there then haven't they already been discovered? That's the way I see it... Also, I didn't know yttrium is more common than lead. Learn something new every day! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:A594:E4D2:7948:BAC8 (talk) 13:17, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * How about we just change Al and Si to 1808 as outlined above and keep everything else the same? Let me know what you think of that idea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:A594:E4D2:7948:BAC8 (talk) 17:42, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The trouble is what counts as knowing that an element is there. Take hafnium: Bohr certainly knew that element 72 would be found in zirconium ores, and motivated by his predictions Coster and Hevesy searched for it there and found it. Isn't this the same situation, just with periodicity and electronic structure substituted for an understanding of the role of oxygen in oxidation and a recognition that earths are metal oxides? If we would like to consider Lavoisier (who understood this) or Davy (who tried and failed to isolate them after Lavoisier had made his remarks) the discoverer of aluminium, when actually they just looked at alumina and realised that it must be the oxide of a metal they could not isolate, why don't we consider Bohr the discoverer of hafnium? (Strictly speaking Bohr was not the only one who predicted that element 72 should be an eka-zirconium at the time, but his prediction is certainly the most well-known.) After all, all samples of zirconium at the time already contained significant hafnium impurities. Double sharp (talk) 05:36, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * If you only have periodicity and electronic structure to go on then you haven't observed the element yet; that's not the case with the role of oxygen in oxidation and a recognition that earths are metal oxides if you're working with the oxide (which Davy was). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:84EE:DBA2:4565:26B0 (talk) 14:34, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * If we're using 1825 for Al and 1823 for Si then we'd have to use 1886 for F, which doesn't make any sense because it was clearly known to exist before then. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:3DC0:9115:A25A:5AC5 (talk) 15:26, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually, I think you'll find that it's quite common to consider fluorine to have been discovered in 1886, although this is usually the result of talking loosely when isolation is meant. This article on the history of fluorine clearly writes "Fluorine was the last of the halogen family to be discovered and separated, after chlorine in 1774, iodine in 1811, and bromine in 1826". For the most part, though, the article (along with Greenwood and Earnshaw) considers this to have been the isolation, and quietly ignores the question of discovery, because it is complicated. In the case of hafnium, because of its extreme similarity to zirconium, experimenters working on Zr had certainly observed Hf directly without knowing what it was because all their Zr samples were contaminated with it. Personally I think that this list is far too simplistic and of necessity treads roughshod over all the different degrees of claims (a fun one is lutetium, where both Urbain and von Welsbach claimed at about the same time to have found a new element occurring with Yb, and both were right, but only von Welsbach succeeded in isolating it – though Urbain mistakenly thought he had). By the same token, if we consider F to have been discovered in 1810, then that means that you can discover an element without experimental work simply by realising what the constituents of a substance must be, which creates fun questions about when Na and K were discovered. It also means that bismuth was discovered in 1753 by Geoffroy, who first managed to experimentally demonstrate that it is a distinct element, which itself causes problems because Agricola was well aware of bismuth far earlier. Furthermore the whole idea that identifying a compound counts as observing the element only really starts to make sense when the whole notion of what a compound is is sorted out – and that was still being sorted out in 1779 when Proust's law was formulated. Again, there isn't a way to apply consistent criteria across all 118 elements to a simple timeline without raising questions. Double sharp (talk) 16:39, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Hmm. It just doesn't make sense that an element could be named (and even its properties determined - keep in mind this was before the periodic table) long before it was discovered... does it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:3DC0:9115:A25A:5AC5 (talk) 17:36, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * You know what, I've thought about it and I think everything should stay the same as it is right now. In fact, can we delete this whole section so it doesn't cause any changes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:7116:FA47:EE6D:F1DC (talk) 14:34, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It's all right. I don't see why the section would need to be deleted; it's useful to have these explanations and examples up to point people to to show that this is not as simple as a simple table implies it is. Double sharp (talk) 02:08, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Cr
Should its discovery and isolation be the same date? Would that be 1797 or 1798? I can't tell from looking at the paper... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18C:8601:8448:4D19:7809:37F:4C7D (talk) 17:55, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Error in Hydrogen section
Antoine Lavoiser named Hydrogen in 1783 while reproducing the 1781 Cavendish experiment not 1793. The Hydrogen wiki page reports it correctly. The website cited (http://elements.vanderkrogt.net/element.php?sym=h) does say 1793 in its header, but if you read the explanatory text below, it references the correct naming year twice. That 1793 in the header appears to be a typo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MC152 (talk • contribs) 14:19, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Yttrium
What do you make of what's said here? https://books.google.com/books?id=EFzuCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=beryllium+1828+yttrium+1828&source=bl&ots=-xmLzhddbd&sig=dDPDYLMsN8WQ_5VHTM2Hj-zM23c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjH75bin8TaAhWDesAKHRcPBms4ChDoATABegQIABA0#v=onepage&q&f=false If it's not true, I feel we can consider Wöhler the isolator of Y since we're considering Ørsted the isolator of Al. Squee3 (talk) 18:31, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Why exactly would it not be true? Indeed this means that Rose (1843) should likely be considered the isolator of yttrium, since he postdates Mosander's removal of terbium and erbium. Double sharp (talk) 13:38, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Noble gases
Wouldn't helium be the first noble gas discovered technically? I know that they found out that the noble gases were a thing when they discovered argon, but helium is a noble gas. So can you please fix it?Porygon-Z 03:53, 26 March 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Porygon-Z474 (talk • contribs)

 * The article says Argon in 1894 was the first noble gas to be *isolated* on Earth. Helium was observed/discovered in 1868 in the Sun, so it could not be isolated at that time. So the article was not strictly wrong, but I have now clarified the helium entry a little. Dirac66 (talk) 18:38, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

plot of year of discovery
Another version of the plot showing the date of discovery that includes the Chemical Symbols.

Oxygen and Sendivogius
How can we have Scheele first observing O in 1771 and Sendivogius isolating it in 1604. How did Sendivogius manage to isolate it without observing it? The column heading says "widely known". Neither Scheele nor Priestley seem to have been aware of Sendivogius' work (or any other important scientists) so I don't see how that can be claimed to be widely known. This book backs up that idea (of not being widely known). Inserted in this edit by user:Double sharp. SpinningSpark 16:21, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I admit that I somehow managed to edit this article for many years without noticing the phrase "widely known"! (Probably because I concentrated more on the lower entries.) Yeah, I guess Sendivogius does not qualify under that qualifier. :) I think I added him because of that misunderstanding, which was hopefully understandable as the Paracelsus entry for hydrogen was already there.
 * The weird dates do tie in to a problem with these early discoveries: at that point the nature of an element was still being sorted out. Scheele and Priestley both had oxygen but only Lavoisier a few years later had the correct idea about what it was. I think this is what I was thinking the Paracelsus date meant and influenced me to put in Sendivogius for oxygen. Double sharp (talk) 16:38, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Do you intend to amend that edit? SpinningSpark 16:54, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I would say Paracelsus has the same problem. He was not originally listed as the first isolator but was in the notes as "had been isolated originally by Paracelsus around 1500 by reacting strong acids with metals, but did not recognise it as a new element." SpinningSpark 17:09, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I changed it to Cavendish and Scheele to match the discoverers, since they definitely did isolate these elemental gases too. Double sharp (talk) 04:37, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

"Double births"
Five trace radioactives actually have two significant discovery years: the year they were first made in a lab, and the year they were first found to be natural after all. (A sixth and seventh might be possible if live 247Cm is ever found.) These are already in the article, but maybe they could be clarified a bit more.

Double sharp (talk) 20:10, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Short description
The SD you have added is pointless. The page title is already sufficiently explanatory so WP:SDNONE applies. The only additional information is that there are 118 elements which, beside being superfluous and open to change, causes the SD to exceed the recommended 40 characters. SpinningSpark</b> 22:12, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Should we change some discovery dates?
Who was the first person to recognize that yttria is a metal oxide, and when? Should that person be given credit for the discovery of Y?

Does it make sense for Be, Al, Si, and Zr to be listed as discovered by Davy in 1808? I know that he failed to isolate them, but this work certainly proved that glucine, alumine, silex, and zircone are metal oxides. The thing is, I've already been told elsewhere that this is incorrect, but it doesn't seem to be...

The reason I'm asking is because, to me at least, it would make the most sense to regard the discovery of an element as when the literature began to treat it as known. Squee3 (talk) 18:06, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Being known is not equivalent to known to be an element. Neither is known to be a metallic compound equivalent to known to be a compound of a metallic element. I have no view on whether your specific examples should be changed, but your premise is incorrect. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 16:32, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
 * There's no criteria that will work consistently over all 118 elements, because people's understanding of what an element is changed. So we go mostly by consensus of reliable sources. If we accepted the logic the OP gives, then I suppose the discoverer of Na and K would have to be Marggraf, because he was the first who distinguished soda and potash. I don't think anyone says this. Double sharp (talk) 17:08, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Holden (writing for IUPAC in 2019) considered Scheele to have discovered Ba, and Vauquelin to have discovered Be. But he also says that Al was "known in prehistoric times", which can only refer to alum rather than the metal (obviously), and I doubt that this idea is standard. (BTW, Holden also gives 1952 for Fm rather than 1953, but the latter seems to be correct based on my limited research: the experimental work spanned over the New Year, and while 99 was secure in 1952, 100 only was in 1953. Similarly, Gd was discovered in 1880, not 1886 as Holden has it; the latter date represents the naming.)
 * Though I have to agree that if Scheele is listed as the discoverer of Cl, then it makes sense to follow Holden's line and give him credit for Ba (and Vauquelin for Be). After all, Scheele did not even have a correct idea of what chlorine was. But then maybe Scheele should get credit for fluorine as Holden gives him? Holden also wrongly thinks that Janssen discovered helium (and has the wrong history for holmium; Holmberg did not name it after himself, he merely isolated it in pure form, and it was Cleve who actually named it), so I'll have to think about this. For lawrencium it is very difficult, because even the TWG could only say that confidence was built up over a decade; maybe the best approach is to say that the 1961 experiment was the first important step rather than the full discovery.
 * I think I'm willing to push Ba, Be, Cl, F, Mg earlier. Probably even Nd. And giving joint credit for Ir. This is about as far as I got (need to go somewhere IRL); I'll look at the rest later. Double sharp (talk) 06:42, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Sr also makes sense, as do Y and Zr. Well, time to make some edits. Double sharp (talk) 08:02, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
 * All right. I even pushed Na, K, and Ca earlier, since it is in RS that the earths were distinguished earlier, and otherwise we are treating Mg and Ca inconsistently. Double sharp (talk) 08:43, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Similarly, per reviews like this (noting the untangling of earths from metals), Lavoisier (or maybe Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau? basically in the 1787 textbook Méthode de nomenclature chimique) should be credited for B and Si. Similar problem occurs for Al. Double sharp (talk) 08:52, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅, based on the above 2022 review of the elements discovered up to the XVIII century. (Other parts for more recent discoveries should be forthcoming.) Double sharp (talk) 14:46, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Timeline of chemical element discoveries
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Timeline of chemical element discoveries's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "CRC":<ul> <li>From Bismuth: </li> <li>From Didymium: </li> <li>From Lithium: </li> <li>From Platinum: </li> <li>From Synthetic element: </li> </ul>

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 17:16, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Pre-1669 discoveries
I agree that my wording wasn't ideal, but I am uncertain about calling c.1500 (bismuth) "medieval". Do you have another suggestion? Double sharp (talk) 15:57, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

 * Hi Double sharp! If we follow the roughest common division of ages as ancient (pre-500), medieval (500-1500) and modern (1500-now), c. 1500 will be a difficult edge case. We could just as well move that entry to the 'Modern discoveries' section (by most standards 1500 actually falls within the bounds of 'early modern', even though it also counts as 'late medieval').
 * Another, perhaps more pertinent solution is to create three sections, 'Ancient and medieval discoveries' (covering everything up till c. 1400), 'Renaissance and early modern discoveries' (covering c. 1400 to 1789, up until the discoveries of Lavoisier and Klaproth), and 'Modern discoveries' (the rest). This would be a common division of ages in the history of science, effectively reflecting three different paradigms and three different rates of discovery. ☿ Apaugasma  ( talk  ☉) 14:58, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I like this division, but got stymied by Bi presenting a problem to move to the modern discoveries: it doesn't really have a known discoverer and was getting recognised by European and Inca civilisation at about the same time – per 10.1126/science.223.4636.585 the Inca bismuth bronze is from 1476–1534. However, I thought of and implemented another solution: moving phosphorus to the earlier table and making the distinction alchemy vs modern chemistry, matching Miskowiec's 2022 review. Then c.1700 isn't really a bad date for this transition especially since we have so much leeway between 1669 (phosphorus) and 1735 (cobalt).
 * As for 1789, I get the reasoning behind it, but I don't like it since titanium follows on from that so quickly (1791). Miskowiec just goes for the calendar mark of 1800, but this is also not that great because vanadium (1801) follows immediately afterwards. My general opinion (informed by this popularised Russian treatment) is that the important breaks once you get to the modern age are c.1700 (alchemy gets supplanted by modern chemistry), c.1850 (when all the common elements had been found, and further progress was impossible without the spectroscope) and c.1900 (when almost all the stable elements had been found – only Lu, Hf, Re were missing – and to go further, it was necessary to delve into radioactivity and learn how to transmute elements ourselves). Unfortunately the last requires absurd precision because of how late the noble gases were discovered: in order to cut according to this line, one needs to cut the timeline between Xe (12 July 1898) and Po (13 July 1898), and when the difference is literally one day, perhaps periodisation has become silly. :) Double sharp (talk) 10:45, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Circa 1700 is certainly the most relevant paradigm break in the history of chemistry specifically, due to the rise of the royal academies. But we should be wary about the alchemy vs chemistry distinction, which increasingly gets rejected by the leading specialists in early modern chemistry (see ; ; ). Let's just use standard period names instead: 'Pre-modern and early modern discoveries' vs 'Modern discoveries'. ☿ Apaugasma  ( talk  ☉) 17:04, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That seems even better to me. So I guess we've worked out a good division! Double sharp (talk) 22:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That seems even better to me. So I guess we've worked out a good division! Double sharp (talk) 22:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That seems even better to me. So I guess we've worked out a good division! Double sharp (talk) 22:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That seems even better to me. So I guess we've worked out a good division! Double sharp (talk) 22:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Split list of modern discoveries?
Should we split the list of modern discoveries? I feel it's a bit unwieldy, since it has roughly 100 rows.

We could simply split it by century: 1700s (ca. 25 entries), 1800s (ca. 40 entries), 1900 until present (ca. 35 entries).

(A less arbitrary / more scientific criterion would be nice, but the only one I can think of is the switch from discovery to synthesis, around 1940. Were there simliar fundamental changes in earlier times?)

The downside of separate lists would be that one cannot sort the whole table (e.g. by atomic number), but since we've already split the pre-modern elements from the rest, I guess that's OK.

— Chrisahn (talk) 19:31, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There's a fairly natural gap between Ru (1844) and Cs (1860) when all the common elements were found and it was impossible to go further without spectroscopy. Unfortunately, the noble gases were discovered extremely late, so what would've been another natural gap is only one day between Xe (12 July 1898) and Po (13 July 1898). Double sharp (talk) 03:02, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Antimony
From the Wikipedia article Antimony:

An artifact, said to be part of a vase, made of antimony dating to about 3000 BC was found at Telloh, Chaldea (part of present-day Iraq), and a copper object plated with antimony dating between 2500 BC and 2200 BC has been found in Egypt. Austen, at a lecture by Herbert Gladstone in 1892, commented that "we only know of antimony at the present day as a highly brittle and crystalline metal, which could hardly be fashioned into a useful vase, and therefore this remarkable 'find' (artifact mentioned above) must represent the lost art of rendering antimony malleable."

The British archaeologist Roger Moorey was unconvinced the artifact was indeed a vase, mentioning that Selimkhanov, after his analysis of the Tello object (published in 1975), "attempted to relate the metal to Transcaucasian natural antimony" (i.e. native metal) and that "the antimony objects from Transcaucasia are all small personal ornaments." This weakens the evidence for a lost art "of rendering antimony malleable."

The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder described several ways of preparing antimony sulfide for medical purposes in his treatise Natural History, around 77 AD. Pliny the Elder also made a distinction between "male" and "female" forms of antimony; the male form is probably the sulfide, while the female form, which is superior, heavier, and less friable, has been suspected to be native metallic antimony.

The Greek naturalist Pedanius Dioscorides mentioned that antimony sulfide could be roasted by heating by a current of air. It is thought that this produced metallic antimony. Burzuchius (talk) 19:58, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't Zosimos then have to be credited for As? Double sharp (talk) 05:15, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, made the changes. As well as putting carbon as first, from ancient charcoal paintings. Yes, I was inspired by the Sodium Lamp blog, but Miśkowiec essentially also makes this point, and somehow it feels right for the king of organic chemistry to be the first discovered by life. :D There's also a difficulty with noble Cu, Ag, and Au (and arguably Fe from meteorites) whose discovery really belongs to prehistory. Double sharp (talk) 08:05, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * P.S. That blog also makes me realise that our claim for Hg is not very well backed up by sources. ? Double sharp (talk) 08:18, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay, I think I've addressed the Hg entry. Double sharp (talk) 09:22, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Sodium and potassium
From the Wikipedia article Potassium:

It was first suggested in 1702 that they were distinct elements that combine with the same anions to make similar salts...

Georg Ernst Stahl obtained experimental evidence that led him to suggest the fundamental difference of sodium and potassium salts in 1702...

The Russian book Популярная библиотека химических элементов presented the following sequence of discoveries:

... 15. Phosphorus (H. Brand, 1669) 16. Hydrogen (R. Boyle, 1670) 17 & 18. Potassium & sodium (it is not said who, but probably G. E. Stahl, 1702 is meant?) 19. Calcium 20. Silicon 21. Cobalt (G. Brandt, 1735) ...

Burzuchius (talk) 20:07, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

 * The full sequence given by that book is: C, S, Au, Ag, Cu, Fe, Pb, Sn, Hg, Zn, As, Sb, Bi, Pt, P, H, K, Na, Ca, Si, Co, Ni, Al, Mg, N, O, Mn, Cl, Mo, Ba, W, F, Sr, Te, B, U, Ti, Zr, Y, Cr, Be, V, Nb, Ta, Ce, Pd, Rh, Os, Ir, I, Li, Cd, Se, Br, La, Th, Er, Tb, Ru, Cs, Rb, Tl, In, He, Ga, Yb, Sc, Ho, Tm, Sm, Gd, Pr, Nd, Dy, Ge, Ar, Kr, Ne, Xe, Po, Ra, Ac, Rn, Eu, Lu, Pa, Hf, Re, Tc, Fr, At, Np, Pu, Cm, Am, Pm, Bk, Cf, Es, Fm, Md, No, Rf, Lr, Db, Sg, Bh.
 * I moved Na and K to 1702. Double sharp (talk) 05:51, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * P.S. personally I think that if we're going to credit anybody before Davy for Cl, then Paracelsus or at least Boyle deserve recognition for H, and Sendivogius for O. Of course, consistency is difficult to achieve in a time when the idea of what an element is was still being worked out. Double sharp (talk) 05:57, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Expansion to Discovery of chemical elements
Per this AfD discussion—looking at this article, I don't necessarily see why it needs to be a "timeline" article. There's certainly enough connective tissue to write a full prose article, and many of the entries are prose anyway. A question is whether this article should be kept and trimmed, or whether it should just be moved and reworked into a proper prose article. Thoughts?<span id="Remsense:1704793601927:TalkFTTCLNTimeline_of_chemical_element_discoveries" class="FTTCmt"> Remsense  留  09:46, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A sizeable amount of prose is definitely necessary to make the entries clear. For example, what is meant by the discovery of Na and K? Finding compounds of them? In that case soda and potash were known since ancient times. Or is it necessary to distinguish them first? In that case Georg Ernst Stahl probably deserves credit for realising that there are two different kinds of alkali, but even decades later Lavoisier was still not sure enough to include Na and K as elements. Or is it necessary to actually isolate the metals? Then we have to wait for Humphry Davy to use electrolysis. So I think reworking into a prose article is the best possible solution. Double sharp (talk) 09:51, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 10 January 2024
<div class="boilerplate mw-archivedtalk" style="background-color: #efe; margin: 0; padding: 0 10px 0 10px; border: 1px dotted #aaa;">
 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Adumbrativus (talk) 02:54, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Timeline of chemical element discoveries → Discovery of chemical elements – This is almost a prose article already, and I think there's enough connective material historically to simply make it one. See above. Remsense 留  21:18, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject History of Science has been notified of this discussion. Remsense  留  21:19, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject Chemistry has been notified of this discussion. Remsense  留  21:19, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

<div style="padding-left: 1.6em; font-style: italic; border-top: 1px solid #a2a9b1; margin: 0.5em 0; padding-top: 0.5em">The discussion above is closed. <b style="color: #FF0000;">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

title: Talk:Discovery of chemical elements