-
The elements carbon, sulfur, iron, tin, lead, copper, mercury, silver, and gold are known to humans. (1600) The elements arsenic, antimony, bismuth, and zinc are known to humans.
-
German physician Hennig Brand discovers phosphorus.
-
Swedish chemist Georg Brandt discovers cobalt.
-
Spanish military Leader Don Antonio de Ulloa discovers platinum
-
Swedish mineralogist Axel Fredrik Cronstedt discovers nickel.
-
English chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish discovers hydrogen.
-
Scottish physician and chemist Daniel Rutherford discovers nitrogen.
-
Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovers chlorine. Swedish mineralogist Johann Gottlieb Gahn discovers manganese. English chemist Joseph Priestley and Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele discover oxygen.
-
Swedish chemist Peter Jacob Hjelm discovers molybdenum.
-
Austrian mineralogist Baron Franz Joseph Müller von Reichenstein discovers tellurium.
-
Spanish scientists Don Fausto D'Elhuyard and Don Juan José D'Elhuyard, and Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele discover tungsten.
-
German chemist Martin Klaproth discovers uranium & zirconium.
-
English clergyman William Gregor discovers titanium.
-
Finnish chemist Johan Gadolin discovers yttrium.
-
French chemist Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin discovers chromium.
-
French chemist Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin discovers beryllium.
-
English chemist Charles Hatchett discovers niobium. Spanish-Mexican metallurgist Andrés Manuel del Río discovers vanadium
-
Swedish chemist and mineralogist Anders Gustaf Ekeberg discovers tantalum.
-
English chemist and physicist William Hyde Wollaston discovers palladium. Swedish chemists Jöns Jakob Berzelius and Wilhelm Hisinger, and German chemist Martin Klaproth discover black rock of Bastnas, Sweden, which led to the discovery of several elements.
-
English chemist and physicist William Hyde Wollaston discovers rhodium. English chemist Smithson Tennant discovers osmium and iridium.
-
English chemist Sir Humphry Davy discovers potassium and sodium.
-
English chemist Sir Humphry Davy discovers barium, strontium, calcium and magnesium. French chemists Louis Jacques Thênard and Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac discover boron.
-
French chemist Bernard Courtois discovers iodine.
-
Swedish chemist Johan August Arfwedson discovers lithium. German chemist Friedrich Stromeyer discovers cadmium.
-
Swedish chemists Jöns Jakob Berzelius and J. G. Gahn discover selenium.
-
Swedish chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius discovers silicon.
-
Danish chemist and physicist Hans Christian Oersted discovers aluminum.
-
French chemist Antoine-Jérôme Balard discovers bromine.
-
Swedish chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius discovers thorium.
-
Swedish chemist Nils Gabriel Sefström rediscovers vanadium.
-
Swedish chemist Carl Gustav Mosander discovers cerium and lanthanum.
-
Swedish chemist Carl Gustav Mosander discovers terbium and erbium.
-
Russian chemist Carl Ernst Claus discovers ruthenium.
-
German chemists Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff discover cesium and rubidium.
.
British physicist Sir William Crookes discovers thallium. -
German chemists Ferdinand Reich and Hieronymus Theodor Richter discover indium.
-
Paul-émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovers gallium .
-
Jean-Charles-Galissard de Marignac receives partial credit for the discovery of ytterbium.
-
Swedish chemist Per Teodor Cleve discovers holmium and thulium.
Swedish chemist Lars Nilson discovers scandium and receives partial credit for the discovery of ytterbium. -
French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovers samarium. French chemist Jean-Charles-Galissard de Marignac discovers gadolinium.
-
Austrian chemist Carl Auer (Baron von Welsbach) discovers praseodymium and neodymium. German chemist Clemens Alexander Winkler discovers germanium.
-
French chemist Henri Moissan discovers fluorine. French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovers dysprosium.
-
English chemists Lord Rayleigh and William Ramsav discover argon.
-
English chemist Sir William Ramsay and Swedish chemists Per Teodor Cleve and Nils Abraham Langlet discover helium.
-
English chemists William Ramsay and Morris Travers discover krypton, neon and xenon. French physicists Marie and Pierre Curie discover polonium and radium.
-
French chemist André Debierne discovers actinium.
-
German physicist Friedrich Ernst Dorn discovers radon.
-
French chemist Eugène-Anatole Demarçay discovers europium.
-
French chemist Georges Urbain discovers lutetium and receives partial credit for the discovery of ytterbium.
-
German physicists Use Meitner and Otto Hahn discover protactinium.
-
Dutch physicist Dirk Coster and Hungarian chemist George Charles de Hevesy discover hafnium.
-
German chemists Walter Noddack, Ida Tacke, and Otto Berg discover rhenium.
-
French chemist Marguerite Perey discovers francium.
-
Italian physicist Emilio Segré and his colleague Carlo Perrier discover technetium.
-
Edwin M. McMillan and Philip H. Abelson prepare neptunium. Dale R. Corson, Kenneth R. Mackenzie, and Emilio Segré discover astatine. The University of California at Berkeley researcher Glenn Seaborg and others prepare plutonium.
-
University of California at Berkeley researchers Glenn Seaborg, Albert Ghiorso, Ralph A. James, and Leon O. Morgan prepare americium. University of California at Berkeley researchers Glenn Seaborg, Albert Ghiorso, and Ralph A. James prepare curium.
-
Scientists at the Oak Ridge Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, discover promethium.
-
The University of California at Berkeley researchers prepare berkelium.
-
University of California at Berkeley researchers Glenn Seaborg, Albert Ghiorso, Kenneth Street, Jr., and Stanley G. Thompson prepare californium.
-
University of California at Berkeley researchers prepare einsteinium. University of California at Berkeley researcher Albert Ghiorso and others prepare fermium.
-
1960s & 1970s Researchers at the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, in Dubna, Russia; the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley; and the Institute for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany, continue to prepare new transfermium elements.