Emily Chan
It wasn’t surprising to have found significant amounts of elements such as gold and mercury. They were often used to treat a number of ailments among the elite members of society.
But according to Kaare Lund Rasmussen, an archaeometry expert at the Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Pharmacy at the University of Southern Denmark, the presence of tungsten was unexpected.
Tungsten was not officially described as an element until about 180 years after Brahe’s death. So, what had he been doing with it?
How did it end up in his lab? The researchers suggest that a mineral naturally containing tungsten must have been processed in Brahe’s lab. The tungsten was then isolated from the mineral without him realizing it.
Another explanation the researchers gave was that Brahe was aware of tungsten’s existence but knew it by a different name.
In the first half of the 1500s, a German mineralogist named Georgius Agricola noticed a strange substance in tin ore from the Saxony region. He called it “Wolfram,” which was later renamed “tungsten.”
The study was published in Heritage Science.
