{
  "id": "elhuyar-brothers-tungsten",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The Elhuyar brothers and the isolation of tungsten (1783)",
  "summary": "On 28 September 1783 Juan José and Fausto Elhuyar reduced the acid of wolframite with charcoal and obtained a new metal, which they called volfram — the isolation of the element the periodic table lists as tungsten, symbol W, done in the laboratories the Real Sociedad Bascongada had set up at Bergara.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "chemistry",
    "science",
    "enlightenment",
    "firsts",
    "mineralogy",
    "biography"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "andres-manuel-del-rio"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "school-of-salamanca"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-seminario-de-mineria"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-tribunal-general-de-mineria"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "experiencias-del-beneficio-de-juan-del-corro"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-sociedad-bascongada-de-los-amigos-del-pais"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "apartado-de-oro-y-plata-de-mexico"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who isolated tungsten?",
    "What chemical element was discovered in Spain?",
    "Why is tungsten's symbol W?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "On 28 September 1783 the brothers Juan José and Fausto Elhuyar obtained a new metal by reduction with charcoal, and named it volfram.",
      "sources": [
        "rah-elhuyar-juan-jose"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The Royal Society of Chemistry credits the discovery of tungsten to the Elhuyar brothers in 1783: they produced the acidic metal oxide and reduced it to the metal by heating with carbon.",
      "sources": [
        "rsc-tungsten"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The priority is shared and the Elhuyars' specific contribution is the metal itself: Scheele had investigated the mineral in 1781, isolating an acidic white oxide and correctly deducing that it came from a new metal, but did not complete the reduction to the element.",
      "sources": [
        "rsc-tungsten"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The brothers asked for the name wolfram, after the mineral wolframite; IUPAC adopted tungsten as the element's sole name in 2005, and the symbol W is what remains of their proposal.",
      "sources": [
        "rsc-tungsten"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The work was institutional, not accidental: the Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País had established chairs and laboratories of chemistry, mineralogy and metallurgy at Bergara, and both brothers had been trained abroad at state expense — in Paris under Hilaire-Marin Rouelle, then at Freiberg, where Juan José studied geology under Werner.",
      "sources": [
        "rah-elhuyar-juan-jose"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "secondary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "industry_observation"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "English-language chemistry pages give this a half-line — \"isolated by the de Elhuyar brothers in 1783\" — with no date, no place and no institution, and the popular Spanish version overstates it as an unshared discovery. This object binds the exact day and the method to the Real Academia de la Historia's record, the priority split with Scheele to the RSC, and the naming to the body that decided it, so an agent asked \"who isolated tungsten\" gets the credit, the caveat and the surviving W in one object.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-09",
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  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/elhuyar-brothers-tungsten.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "The Elhuyar brothers and the isolation of tungsten (1783)",
    "description": "On 28 September 1783 Juan José and Fausto Elhuyar reduced the acid of wolframite with charcoal and obtained a new metal, which they called volfram — the isolation of the element the periodic table lists as tungsten, symbol W, done in the laboratories the Real Sociedad Bascongada had set up at Bergara.",
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    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-09",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Tungsten — Element information, history and uses",
        "url": "https://periodic-table.rsc.org/element/74/tungsten"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Juan José d'Elhuyar y Lubice — biography, Diccionario Biográfico electrónico",
        "url": "https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/6496/juan-jose-d-elhuyar-y-lubice"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "The Elhuyar brothers and the isolation of tungsten (1783)"
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}