Osmium vs. ‘Ptène’: The Naming of the Densest Metal

Abstract

This paper reviews the use and relation of the word ‘ptène’ to osmium. While Smithson Tennant discovered osmium in platinum ore in 1804, the French chemists Antoine-François Fourcroy and Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin simultaneously identified in a platinum residue a metal they called ‘ptène’. This name was most probably attributed to a mixture of platinoids (excluding platinum), mainly osmium and iridium. Nevertheless, Fourcroy later considered that ‘ptène’ was the name they attributed to osmium.