Dmitri Mendeleev had predicted in 1871 that an unnamed element with an atomic number 43 would possibly be present in the universe. He thought it would have properties very close to manganese, and even named it eka-manganese. Nearly seventy years later the element technetium with the atomic number 43 was discovered in a laboratory.
Many scientists had published reports that they had discovered Mendeleev’s predicted element 43 in 1846, 1847, 1877, 1896, 1908, and 1925. None of these turned out to be technetium, as they all were other elements.
In 1937, Emilio Segre and Carlo Perrier published the results of their experiment in which they isolated technetium from a sample of molybdenum.
Technetium was the first element to be produced artificially. All the original technetium present when Earth was formed, has long since decayed.
Almost the entire element that is produced today is produced artificially. It is so rare an element that only around 18000 tonnes of it could be found in the earth’s crust.
Today, technetium is used in radioactive isotope medical tests. Highly radioactive, it is also used in a host of diagnostic tests. It has several other industrial and chemical uses too.
The atomic symbol of Technetium is Tc.
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