Firenze University Press www.fupress.com/substantia Feature Article Almost a Discovery – Henri Gorceix, the Mining School of Ouro Preto, the Monazite Sand of Citation: J.H. Maar (2018) Almost a Discovery – Henri Gorceix, the Mining Bahia and the Chemistry of Didymium School of Ouro Preto, the Monazite Sand of Bahia and the Chemistry of Didymium. Substantia 2(2): 27-41. doi: 10.13128/substantia-59 Juergen Heinrich Maar Copyright: © 2018 J.H. Maar. This is Retired, Chemistry Department, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, an open access, peer-reviewed article SC, Brazil published by Firenze University Press E-mail:
[email protected] (http://www.fupress.com/substantia) and distribuited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, Abstract. The chemical history of the supposed element didymium may well be char- which permits unrestricted use, distri- acterised as a case of collecting empirical data in a period of “normal” science. But this bution, and reproduction in any medi- element’s history also reveals little known facts of the history of chemistry in South um, provided the original author and America, such as the exploration and smuggling of monazite sands, and the difficult source are credited. beginnings of scientific research and higher education in Brazil. Didymium is also a Data Availability Statement: All rel- curious case: even after it was shown to be a mixture, it continued to be regarded as an evant data are within the paper and its element. This fact alone raises questions about the adequacy of scientific methodology Supporting Information files. at the time. In this paper, we consider the history of didymium, and determine how this history’s different facts and stories, set in Brazil’s rather unique historical and sci- Competing Interests: The Author(s) entific context, intertwine thanks to the work of Claude Henri Gorceix.