Johan August Arfwedson
Swedish chemist
January 12, 1792 - October 28, 1841

Arfwedson, a metallurgist, chemist, and mineralogist, was born in 1792 in Sweden. He was educated at home until the age of fourteen. Arfwedson entered college in 1806, completed a mining course and examination, and then entered the Royal Bureau of Mines at Stockholm.

At the Bureau, he served as secretary and found time to work in Berzelius' laboratory doing chemical analysis. There he worked on the oxides of manganese, discovered the element lithium, and in 1823, believed that he had prepared uranium metal. In fact, it was uranium(IV) oxide, UO2.

In 1841, the Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Arfwedson a gold medal in honor of his discovery of lithium.