Friedrich Wöhler produces aluminum powder in 1827,…

Friedrich Wöhler produces aluminum powder in 1827, using potassium metal as the reducing agent.

Since the discovery of potassium by Humphry Davy, it had been assumed that alumina, the basis of clay, contained a metal in combination with oxygen.

Davy, Hans Christian Ørsted, and Jöns Jacob Berzelius have attempted the extraction of this metal, but failed.

Wöhler, a German chemist, now works on the same subject, and discovers the metal aluminum, or aluminium, in 1827.

Born in Eschersheim (which belongs to Hanau at this time but is today a district of Frankfurt am Main), Wöhler had finished his study of medicine in Heidelberg  in 1823 at the laboratory of Leopold Gmelin, who had arranged for him to work under Jöns Jakob Berzelius in Stockholm, Sweden.

From 1826, he teaches chemistry at the Polytechnic School in Berlin.