Lars Fredrik Nilson

Born May 27, 1840, in Skönberga; died May 14, 1899, near Stockholm. Swedish chemist. Became a professor at Uppsala University in 1878 and at the Agricultural Academy in Stockholm in 1882.

In 1879, Nilson discovered scandium, whose atomic weight and properties correspond to those of ekaboron, which had been predicted in 1870–71 by D. I. Mendeleev. Nilson studied rare elements, including ytterbium. In 1884, in collaboration with the Swedish chemist S. O. Pettersson, he determined the density of beryllium chloride vapor and subsequently established that the atomic weight of beryllium is not 13.5, as previously believed, but rather 9.1, thereby confirming Mendeleev’s assumptions based on the work of I. V. Avdeev. This discovery placed beryllium in Group II of the Mendeleev periodic system.