The history of the discovery of element 72 that was eventually named hafnium provides perhaps the single most bitterly fought controversy among the discovery of any element. One of the first reports of its discovery was by Georges Urbain from France who eventually took what he believed to be a sample of this element to Henry Moseley in the hope that his claim might be validated. It did not take long for Moseley to show that Urbain's new element was spurious. About ten years later Hevesy and Coster working in the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen announced that they had discovered the real element 72. At this point Urbain revived his claim and was supported by the British and French press, both scientific and popular.  What followed can only be described as a comical priority dispute driven entirely by nationalism. The British did not hide the fact that they supported the French claim of Urbain because the British and the French had been allies during the Great War. Another controversial aspect of this element was the extent to which it's discovery was helped by Bohr's quantum mechanical account of the structure of atoms. The popular account has it that Bohr directed Hevesy and Coster to look for the new element in some minerals containing zirconium.  Subsequent historical research has shown that this view is untenable.

Vexed story of element 72 - hafnium

248th National Meeting (2014)

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