Re: where was aluminum discovered?

Aluminium is the most common metallic element in the earth's crust! There is even more 
aluminium than iron. But aluminium is also a metal that is extraordinarily difficult to separate from 
its compounds.

The name aluminium comes from "alum", which is potassium aluminium sulfate, a compound of 
aluminium. It was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans as a medicine. Corundum, and 
sapphire, and several other gemstones, are entirely or largely made of aluminium oxide. They have 
also been known for a very long time.

In England in the early 1800s, Humphry Davy was able to prepare a number of elements that had 
been difficult to separate from their compounds -- sodium and potassium in 1807, and 
magnesium and calcium in 1808. He used electrolysis of molten alkalis for the first two,  or 
powdered oxides mixed with mercury for the others. He tried hard to prepare aluminium metal in 
this way as well, but failed.

The metal was first prepared in Denmark, by the scientist Oersted. He reacted aluminium chloride 
with potassium metal dissolved in mercury in 1825. The metal he prepared was rather impure. The 
first reasonably pure aluminium was prepared in 1827 using a refinement of Oersted's method. 
The scientist was Woehler, and the location was Germany.

My references are 'CRC Handbook of Chemistry & Physics', page B-6, and 'Chemistry of the 
Elements', Greenwood & Earnshaw, pages 75, 118, and 243. There are many web-based periodic 
table sites that give this information. Here is one web page about aluminium.