pure element. That natural platinum contained palladium, rhodium, osmium and iridium was discovered in the first decade of the 19th century. Platinum in alluvial sands of Russian rivers gave access to raw material for use in plates and medals and for the minting of ruble coins, starting in 1828. Residues from platinum production for coinage were available in the Russian Empire, and therefore most of the research on them was done in Eastern Europe. It is possible that the Polish chemist Jędrzej Śniadecki isolated element 44 (which he called "vestium" after the asteroid Vesta discovered shortly before) from South American platinum ores in 1807. He published an announcement of his discovery in 1808. His work was never confirmed, however, and he later withdrew his claim of discovery. Jöns Berzelius and Gottfried Osann nearly discovered ruthenium in 1827. They examined residues that were left after dissolving crude platinum from the Ural Mountains in aqua regia. Berzelius did not find any unusual metals, but Osann thought he found three new metals, which he called pluranium, ruthenium, and polinium. This discrepancy led to a long-standing controversy between Berzelius and Osann about the composition of the residues. As Osann was not able to repeat his isolation of ruthenium, he eventually relinquished his claims. The name "ruthenium" was chosen by Osann because the analysed samples stemmed from the Ural Mountains in Russia. The name itself derives from the Latin word Ruthenia; this word was used at the time as the Latin name for Russia. In 1844, Karl Ernst Claus, a Russian scientist of Baltic German descent, showed that the compounds prepared by Gottfried Osann contained small amounts of ruthenium, which Claus had discovered the same year. Claus isolated ruthenium from the platinum residues of rouble production while he was working in Kazan University, Kazan, the same way its heavier congener osmium had been discovered four decades earlier. Claus showed that ruthenium oxide contained a new metal and obtained 6 grams of ruthenium from the part of crude platinum that is insoluble in aqua regia. Choosing the name for the new element, Claus stated: "I named the new body, in honour of my Motherland, ruthenium. I had every right to call it by this name because Mr. Osann relinquished his ruthenium and the word does not yet exist in chemistry." In doing so, Claus started a trend that continues to this day - naming an element