Vanadium was discovered in 1801 by the Spanish scientist Andres Manuel del Rio.
Del Rio discovered the new element in brown lead ore (now known to be the mineral vanadinite, Pb5[VO4]3Cl) in New Spain (Mexico).
Del Rio had moved to Mexico as a professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy at the Royal School of Mines, Mexico City.
He named his new element panchromo or panchromium meaning ‘all of the colors’ because of the wide range of colors he had found when investigating the element’s salts.
He then renamed the element eritrono or erythronium, from the Greek word eruthros, meaning red. The new name was inspired by the red color which was seen when Group 1 or Group 2 oxide salts of the new element – for example sodium vanadium oxide – were heated or acidified
In 1805 the French chemist Hippolyte-Victor Collet-Descotils examined the lead ore and announced that erythronium was actually impure chromium – an analysis which, unfortunately, del Rio accepted.
Nothing more was heard of the element until 1830, when Nils Gabriel Sefström in Stockholm, Sweden, found a new metal in a Swedish iron ore.
He called this new element vanadium after ‘Vanadis’ the Scandinavian goddess of beauty because of the beautiful multicolored compounds formed by the metal. (4)
In the same year, German chemist Friedrich Wöhler reinvestigated the Mexican lead ore and found that vanadium was identical to del Rio’s erythronium. (5)
The metal was first isolated by Sir Henry E. Roscoe in 1867, in Manchester, England, by reducing vanadium chloride with hydrogen.
The vanadium mineral roscoelite was named in honor of Rocoe’s work.