Melting the Platinum Group Metals

Some fifty years ago Donald McDonald wrote in Platinum Metals Review on 'The History of the Melting of Platinum' (1) and Leslie B. Hunt marked the event's bicentenary in 'The First Real Melting of Platinum: Lavoisier's Ultimate Success with Oxygen'(2), which is also covered in the invaluable "A History of Platinum and its Allied Metals" (3). The topic is revisited and extended here, showing how oxygen, first isolated by Joseph Priestley and Carl Wilhelm Scheele, was used by Antoine Lavoisier to melt platinum. Work on the melting of the other platinum group metals (pgms) and modern methods for melting the metals are also discussed.