Robert Boyle, an Irish chemist, had been the first to use phosphorus to ignite sulfur-tipped wooden splints, forerunners of our modern matches, in 1680, but the element remains a chemical curiosity until 1770, when the Swedish apothecary and chemist Carl Scheele and his associate, Johan Gottlieb Gahn, show that calcium phosphate (Ca₃(PO₄)₂) is found in bones and obtain phosphorus from bone ash.