Collaboration between Jöns Jacob Berzelius and Gottfried Wilhelm Osann, a German-Russian chemist who has taught chemistry and medicine at the University of Tartu in Estonia from 1823, nearly leads to the discovery of ruthenium in 1828.

They dissolve platinum ore from the Ural Mountains in aqua regia and sift through the insoluble residue.

Where Berzelius finds nothing, Osann thinks he's detected three new metals and names them pluranium (concatenation of platina and Ural), ruthenium (after the Latin name for Russia) and polinium (from the Greek word polia, meaning gray-haired, for its residue color).

Unfortunately, the quantity of the metals is too small to isolate, and the existence of ruthenium will not be verified until 1844 by the Russian chemist Karl Klaus, who is often credited with the discovery of the metal.