Cobalt is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal used in lithium-ion batteries and superalloys.
Core Principles & Analysis
Georg Brandt isolated cobalt around 1735, the first metal discovered by a named person; its name comes from the 'kobold' goblins miners blamed for ores that yielded no silver and gave off arsenic fumes.
Cobalt compounds have colored glass and porcelain deep blue for over a millennium, and the ferromagnetic metal keeps its magnetism up to 1,115 C, the highest Curie temperature of any element.
Cobalt is critical in lithium-ion battery cathodes and jet-engine superalloys, and a single cobalt atom sits at the center of vitamin B12.