History

History

Discoverer: Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Robert Wilhelm Bunsen
Place of Discovery: Germany
Date of Discovery: 1860
The Story of Discovery:
Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen found the element by looking at the line spectrom of many elements in the mineral water from Durkheim. They came upon an element with a line spectrum of two bright lines that has never been seen before and named the element caesium. They named it caesium because of the latin meaning, heavenly blue. When Bunsen separated the different elements in the mineral water by using the process of precipitation, he discovered the caesium was caesium salt. He was able to isolate the different elements but not caesium alone. It was Setterberg who later achieved the isolation of caesium⁽⁵⁾.