Niobium, a rare mineral primarily used to improve steel alloys, and of which Brazil is the world's main producer has seen ...
In fact Niobium was originally named columbium after Columbia, because of its discovery in a mineral sent from America in 1801. The following half-century saw a great deal of confusion about exactly ...
After Ekeberg's discovery, however, tantalum fell prey to a case of mistaken identity, with many chemists believing that it was one and the same as columbium, another metal described at around the ...