History Of Discovery
At first nitrogen gas was isolated and characterised by Daniel Rutherford in 1772. Professor Daniel Rutherford (3 November 1749 – 15 November 1819) was a Scottish chemist and physician who is most famous for the isolation of nitrogen in 1772.
Daniel Rutherford
Phosphorus was discovered by German alchemist Hennig Brand in 1669. Working in Hamburg, Brandt attempted to create the Philosopher's stone through the distillation of some salts by evaporating urine, and in the process produced a white material that glowed in the dark and burned brilliantly.
His process originally involved letting urine stand for days until it gave off a terrible smell. Then he boiled it down to a paste, heated this paste to a high temperature, and led the vapours through water where he hoped they would condense to gold. Instead, he obtained a white, waxy substance that glowed in the dark. Brand had discovered phosphorus, the first element discovered since antiquity. We now know that Brand produced ammonium sodium hydrogen phosphate, (NH4)NaHPO4. While the quantities were essentially correct (it took about 1100 litres of urine to make about 60 grams of phosphorus), it was unnecessary to allow the urine to rot. Later scientists would discover that fresh urine yielded the same amount of phosphorus.
Arsenic, antimony and bismuth were known long before the discovery of phosphorus due to simplicity of their extraction from natural ores.
Elemental As was isolated for the first time in the XII century in Europe. The famous bishop and alchemist Albrechtus Magnus, who was also called Saint Albert the Great (1193-1280), was an advocate of peaceful coexistence of science and religion. He is credited with the discovery of the element arsenic.
Saint Albert the Great (1193-1280),
In the centuries since his death, many stories arose about Albertus as an alchemist and magician. On the subject of alchemy and chemistry, he wrote treatises on Alchemy; Metals and Materials; the Secrets of Chemistry; the Origin of Metals; the Origins of Compounds, and a Concordance which is a collection of Observations on the philosopher's stone; and other alchemy-chemistry topics, collected under the name of Theatrum Chemicum.
Antimony was well-known already in antiquity, not only its natural compounds stibnite, Sb2S3, that was used in ancient cosmetics to darken the eyebrows and lashes, and also as a simple substance. A detailed description of properties of antimony and its compounds gave an alchemist of XV-XVI centuries Basil Valentine. A famous medieval metallurgist Agricola G. (1494-1555) recognized metal antimony as different from all other metals.
The ancient words for antimony mostly have, as their chief meaning, kohl, the sulfide of antimony. The Egyptians called antimony mśdmt; in hieroglyphics, the vowels are uncertain, but there is an Arabic tradition that the word is mesdemet. The origin of this is uncertain; all suggestions have some difficulty either of form or interpretation. The popular etymology, from anti-monachos or French antimoine, still has adherents; this would mean "monk-killer", and is explained by many early alchemists being monks, and antimony being poisonous.
In addition to arsenic and antimony bismuth has been known since ancient times. Bismuth (New Latin bisemutum from German Wismuth, perhaps from weiße Masse, "white mass") was confused in early times with tin and lead because of its resemblance to those elements. Bismuth, and so no one person is credited with its discovery.