Hennig Brandt Legendary German alchemist Country: Germany

1. The Life of Hennig Brand
2. The Discovery of Phosphorus

The Life of Hennig Brand

Hennig Brand was a legendary German alchemist who is believed to have discovered phosphorus in 1669. Little is known about Hennig Brand's life, and the information available is fragmentary and unreliable. Different sources diverge in his background: some claim that he came from humble origins and was an apprentice to a glassblower, while others assert that he had a high social status and could afford to maintain an alchemical laboratory. It is known for certain that he was born and lived in Hamburg. During the Thirty Years' War, he served as a simple soldier but later decided that it was too dangerous for him, so he declared himself a doctor and immersed himself in the world of alchemists. However, lacking wealthy patrons, he did not excel in this field and turned to commerce. With luck on his side, Hennig Brand became a successful merchant. Having accumulated a fortune, he was able to acquire equipment for his favorite pursuit - the production of alchemical gold. It is also known that Hennig Brand had two wives, with the second one possessing sufficient means. There is a version that this fact aided his alchemical experiments.

The Discovery of Phosphorus

In his quest to find the philosopher's stone, Hennig Brand isolated phosphorus in 1669. After failing to transmute the element into gold, he began trading it himself and eventually sold the secret. He passed away around 1710. Hennig Brand believed that the "prime matter" could be found in human urine. To that end, he collected several barrels of urine in military barracks. Brand then slowly evaporated the collected urine, resulting in a syrupy liquid that he distilled twice. This process yielded a substance he called "dead head." He then heated the "dead head" with sand and charcoal in the absence of air. The heating led to the formation of white dust, which slowly settled at the bottom of the retort and glowed in the dark. In great excitement, Brand mistook the resulting substance for the "prime matter" and named it phosphorus, meaning light-bringer. Brand immediately began experiments to transform the obtained substance (or other substances with its help) into gold, but all his attempts were futile. He then found another way to turn his work into "gold": phosphorus sparked immense interest in society, and Brand began actively trading it, setting a price higher than that of gold and keeping the method of obtaining phosphorus a secret. Later, realizing that he could not keep his secret for long, he sold the phosphorus production technology to Dresden chemist D. Kraft for 200 thalers. Some time later, phosphorus was also obtained by another German chemist, Johann Kunkel. Independently of Brand and Kunkel, phosphorus was obtained by Robert Boyle, who described the process in his article "A Method for Preparing Phosphorus from Human Urine," dated October 14, 1680, and published in 1693. The improved method for obtaining phosphorus was published in 1743 by Andreas Marggraf.