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.

Scheele, the discoverer of oxygen, obtains a greenish-yellowish gas from hydrochloric acid and powdered black manganese dioxide in 1774, but fails to recognize it as an element.

Called oxymuriatic acid, now known to be chlorine, it is considered an oxygen-containing compound.

Digestion of bones with nitric or sulfuric acid forms phosphoric acid, from which Scheele distills phosphorus by heating with charcoal.

Scheele and Torbern Olaf Bergman recognize manganese as an element while working with the mineral pyrolusite; Scheele's associate Gahn isolates the pure metal later in 1774.

The element's name, which Guyton de Morveau will propose in 1787, derives from Latin magnes, magnet, because of earlier confusion with magnetic ores.

Scheele finds that the mineral called heavy spar or barys—Greek for heavy—contains a new earth, which becomes known as baryta.

From this base, now known to be the oxide of barium, he prepares some crystals of barium sulfate, which he sends to Gahn.

Gahn finds a month later that the mineral barite is also composed of barium sulfate.