Stromeyer made his discovery after a request from the government to inspect the pharmacies in the town of Hildesheim, Germany.
In those days zinc oxide was used, as it still is, to treat skin conditions. For some reason, Hildesheim’s pharmacies were selling zinc carbonate rather than the usual zinc oxide.
Stromeyer was aware that heating zinc carbonate until it was red hot would convert it to the oxide. He did this with samples from the pharmacies. He found that the brilliant white carbonate turned into an oxide which ought to have been white, but was in fact yellow/orange.î
Normally this color would suggest iron or lead contamination, but Stromeyer could not find any trace of these elements.
He visited the factory in Salzgitter where the pharmacies had bought the zinc carbonate. He asked why they were selling zinc carbonate instead of the usual oxide.
The manager explained to him that their zinc carbonate was the expected color – white – and it was easy to sell.
When they tried to convert the carbonate to the oxide by heating, it always turned yellow. Since zinc oxide ought to be white, they could not sell it. They had analyzed it carefully for iron contamination, but could find none.
Stromeyer then decided he would analyze this yellow zinc oxide carefully himself. He found the yellow color was caused by “the presence of a peculiar metallic oxide, the existence of which had not hitherto been suspected.”
He extracted this new metal oxide from the zinc oxide and then reduced it to isolate the world’s first ever cadmium metal. He likened its appearance to platinum’s and measured its density as 8.75 g/cm3 – very close to today’s accepted value.
He did further work and found that other zinc compounds also contained his new metal. He analyzed ‘pure’ zinc metal, and found his new metal was present even in this.
He estimated that the new metal was present at between 0.1% and 1% in zinc and its compounds, from which he was able to isolate 3 grams of pure cadmium metal.
Stromeyer suggested the name of cadmium after ‘cadmia,’ the Latin name for calamine. Calamine is an old name for a zinc ore.
Cadmium was independently discovered by German chemist Karl Hermann in 1818. Hermann had noticed an unexpected yellow color in zinc sulfide. The yellow was assumed to be from arsenic impurities, but Hermann realized that it was actually due to a previously unknown element. (2)