1. Gregor (Reverend William Gregor, 1762—1817): In 1791, titanium was discovered in Cornwall, England in the form of titanium-containing minerals. The discoverer was the English amateur mineralogist Gregor (Reverend William Gregor). ), who was working as a priest in charge of the Diocese of Creed in Cornwall. He found some black sand by the creek in the neighbouring Manaccan parish. Later he discovered that the sand would be attracted by magnets. He realized that this mineral (ilmenite) contains a new element . After analysis, it was found that there were two metal oxides in the sand: iron oxide (the reason the sand is attracted by the magnet) and a white metal oxide that he could not identify. Realizing that this unidentified oxide contains an undiscovered metal, Gregor published the discovery to the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall and the German Annals of Chemistry. At about the same time, Franz-Joseph Müller von Reichenstein also produced a similar substance, but could not identify it.
2. Klaproth (Martin Heinrich Klaproth, 1743-1817): In 1795, German chemist Klaproth also discovered this oxide when analyzing red rutile produced in Hungary. He advocated adopting the method of naming uranium (discovered by Klaprott in 1789), citing the name of the Titanic tribe in Greek mythology "Titanic" to name this new element "Titanium". The Chinese name is Ti according to its transliteration. When he heard of Gregor's earlier discovery, Klaprott obtained some samples of the Manacán mineral and confirmed that it contained titanium.
3. Hunter Matthew A. Hunter): The titanium discovered by Gregor and Kraprot at the time was powdered titanium dioxide, not metallic titanium. Because the oxide of titanium is extremely stable, and metal titanium can directly and fiercely combine with oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, etc., elemental titanium is difficult to prepare. It was not until 1910 that the American chemist Hunter used sodium to reduce TiCl4 to produce titanium with a purity of 99.9%.
