tantalum

Tantalum is a chemical element with atomic number 73 and the symbol Ta. It is a hard, ductile, blue-gray transition metal. It has a high melting point and is corrosion resistant and relatively inert chemically, making it useful in reaction vessels, jet engines, nuclear reactors, and in capacitors for electronic equipment. The element was discovered in 1802 by Anders Ekeberg.

Tantalum is another element which takes its name from Greek mythology, but in this case the name is also a metaphor for one of its chemical properties. It is named for Tantalus, the king of Phrygia, who was punished by the gods for a number of crimes. He abused Zeus’s hospitality by, when invited to dine at Olympus, stealing nectar and ambrosia. And more gruesomely, he offered up his son Pelops as the main course at a banquet for the gods. Tantalus’s punishment in the afterlife was to forever stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree. Whenever he reached from the fruit, the branches would move out of his reach, and whenever he stooped to drink, the water would recede. The verb to tantalize also comes from his name.

Ekeberg named the element tantalum due to its resistance to acids. Like the mythological king’s inability to get a drink, the metal resists reacting to acids:

Tar jag mig den frihet, at gifva namn åt famillen. Sjelfva recruten bland metallerne kallar jag TANTALUM, dels för at fólja bruket, som gillar namn ur Mythologien, dess för at alludera på dess oförmögenhet at, midt i ôfverflödet af syra, dåraf taga något åt sig och måttas. Malmen, ſom består af Tantalum, Jårn, och Manganes, må heta Tantalit.

(I take the liberty of naming the family. The newcomer itself among the metals I call TANTALUM, partly to follow the practice, which likes names from mythology, partly to allude to its inability to, in the midst of an excess of acid, absorb any of it and be saturated. The ore, which consists of tantalum, iron, and manganese, may be called tantalite.)

It is chemically similar to niobium, and the two elements are frequently found together in ores. In myth, Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus.

Sources:

Ekeberg, A. G. “Upplysning om Ytterjordens egenskaper, i synnerhet i jämförelse med Berylljorden: om de Fossilier, hvari förstnämnde jord innehålles, samt om en ny upptäckt kropp af metallisk natur.” Kongliga Vetenskaps Academiens Nya Handlingar, 23, 1802, 68–83 at 80. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements: Part 2—Turbulent Nineteenth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 8 December 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09451-w.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. tantalum, n.

Image credit: Giulio Sanuto, 1565. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.