William H. Wollaston discovered Palladium in 1803. He experimented on the residues left after dissolving platinum in aqua regia. He successfully isolated palladium by heating palladium cyanide to produce palladium metal. But Wollaston decided to announce his discovery in an unconventional manner. He gave a quantity of the metal for sale to a mineral dealer in London, and posted handbills describing the property of the new metal, anonymously.
Many doubts came up with this peculiar way of announcement, and Richard Chenevix, a renowned chemist of the time stated that palladium was just an alloy of platinum and mercury. In response to that, Wollaston announced a reward of twenty guineas to anyone who could produce the metal artificially. Nobody claimed the money. In 1805, Wollaston made a speech before the Royal Society of London about the properties of palladium and how to isolate it. He revealed he was the discoverer of the metal at the end of the speech. He explained that he remained anonymous to use the time to study and reveal more properties of the metal.
Palladium is named after an asteroid called ‘Pallas’, which refers to the Greek goddess of wisdom.
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