The presence of hafnium was originally predicted by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869. In 1921, Neils Bohr asked Georg von Hevesy, a Hungarian chemist, to look for the missing element in zirconium ores. Hevesy and Dirk Coster, a Dutch physicist, discovered hafnium in 1923 using x-ray spectroscopy while they analyzed the zirconium ores. Later, in 1925, Anton Eduard van Arkel and Jan Hendrik de Boer discovered a method for producing high purity hafnium.
The process of isolating hafnium included the decomposition of hafnium tetraiodide (HfI4) on a white-hot tungsten filament. It is known as the crystal bar process as it creates a crystal bar of pure hafnium.
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