HiN 11 | A. Zemtsov

Alexander von Humboldt’s ideas
on volcanism and their influence on Russian scientists

The story of the name of a chemical element discovered in Russia during the Humboldt expedition

During his travels in 1829, Humboldt reached the Barnaul-Semipalatinsk region on the slopes of the Altai mountain system. Polymetallic ores were extracted here at a number of mines. At the end of the 1940s, a Soviet nuclear test site was established in this region for the first Russian nuclear explosion, on August 29, 1949.

Samarium is element number 62 in the Periodic Table. Here is the story of how it was named (after V. V. Stantso, S. А. Pogodin in (Chemical Elements Popular Encyclopedia, 1973, p. 96-97)).

The mineral was found initially in the Ilmen Mountains by Gustav Rose. His brother Henrich Rose (1795-1864) made a thorough chemical study of the mineral and suggested naming it after Colonel Vasiliy Samarskiy. The name samarskit was officially given to the mineral in 1847 (The Encyclopedia of Mineralogy, 1981 (1985), p. 449).

The significance of samarskit is stressed in the reports of the Radium expedition of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1912-1914, edited by V.Vernadskiy. He mentioned that samarskit was the first uranium-rich mineral found in the Ilmen mountains. The results of chemical analysis of samarskit, showing the presence of uranium, were apparently published by G. Rose in 1839.[1] However, Vernadskiy wrote that “the discovery of this mineral is a rather dark matter” (Vernadskiy, 1997, p. 70).

The new chemical element separated from this mineral (L. de Boisbaudran, 1879) was named Samarium.[2]

Samarskiy’s service record can be found in: “Русский биографический словарь. СПб, 1896-1918”. This very rare book has been prepared recently in photocopy form by Axel Frey as “Russischer Biographischer Index” (München, 2002) and granted to the Russian State Library (St. Petersburg). Below are the data from this source:

Vasiliy Samarskiy-Byhovet’s (1803-1870) family was from the Tomsk region nobility. He graduated from the Mining cadet high school. Colonel (1843). Chief of Staff of the Corps of Mining Engineers in 1845-1861. Later he was a member of the Russian Mining Council and the Learned Committee of the Mining Council. In 1861 he became a head of the Commission for the revision of Russian Mining Statute. In 1862 he traveled to London to study new technology achievements at a London World Fair. At the time of Humboldt’s travel to Russia, Samarskiy-Byhovets probably served as a mining officer at Salair[3] and Ridder[4] mines of the polymetallic ores in the Altai region.

[1] Metallic uranium was obtained in 1841.

[2] Today this element (stable isotope - Sm¹⁴⁹) is a well-known poisoning agent for nuclear reactors and is widely used in magnetic alloys (such as SmCo₅ and SmCo₁₇).

[3] The silver-smelting works were opened in Salair in 1815.

[4] This mine started its operation in 1791, after the discovery of the polymetallic ores in 1786 by the mining officer F. Ridder. In 1941 the town was renamed Leninogorsk.