Fortifying Boron

Boron, chemical symbol B and atomic number 5, is among the most versatile elements used in manufacturing across most industries. It is essential to plant and animal biology and has many accepted medicinal uses. It has three valence electrons in its outer shell, which yields a consistent electron deficiency, giving it flexibility similar to carbon, making it an outstanding chemical catalyst, and enabling multicenter bonding.

People used minerals that contained boron for centuries before the element was isolated. Sodium borate is a naturally occurring inorganic substance containing 10-11% boron, hence the common name borax. This compound was first discovered in ancient Persian and Tibetan lake beds. Egyptians used borax for mummification, the Chinese in ceramics and pottery, and the Romans as a flux in metalworking. The world found many uses for borax, but no one knew how or why it worked.

It wasn’t until 1808 that boron was isolated, and the mystery behind borax began to become clear. Great British chemist Sir Humphry Davy was experimenting with the substance in London at nearly the same time that chemists Louis Jacques Thénard and Louis-Joseph Gay-Lussac were following similar lines in France. These early experiments yielded a brown powder that contained a higher concentration of boron. Chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius of Sweden performed more precise analysis in 1824, confirming that boron was a new element.