Figure 1. Woodcut dated 1518 showing a doctor and nurse attending a sick miner in Joachimsthal's hospital. Mining activity can be seen in the background. In the early 1780s the pharmacist Martin Klaproth, who later became Professor of Chemistry at Berlin's Royal Mining Academy, discovered that the black mineral could be used to give glass a brilliant yellow colour and he was also convinced that it contained a new metal. This coincided with the 1781 discovery by William Herschel of a new planet in the solar system, Uranus, and uranium was thus named in honour of the planet by Klaproth. (Courtesy of Dr Fathi Habashi and Dr Adrian Thomas.)