nd the
continuous interplay between basic science and the search for
practical usage._

THE AUTHOR: _Eduard Farber is a research professor at American
University, Washington, D.C., and has been associated with the
Smithsonian Institution as a consultant in chemistry._

When phosphorus was discovered, nearly three centuries ago, it was
considered a miraculous thing. The only event that provoked a similar
emotion was the discovery of radium more than two centuries later. The
excitement about the _Phosphorus igneus_, Boyle's _Icy Noctiluca_, was
slowly replaced by, or converted into, chemical research. Yet, if we
would allow room for emotion in research, we could still be excited
about the wondrous substance that chemical and biological work continues
to reveal as vitally important. It is a fundamental plant nutrient, an
essential part in nerve and brain substance, a decisive factor in muscle
action and cell growth, and also a component in fast-acting, powerful
poisons. The importance of phosphorus was gradually recognized and the
means by which this took place are characteristic and similar to other
developments in the history of science. This paper was written in order
to summarize these various means which led to the highly complex ways of
present research.

The Element from Animals and Plants

It was a little late to search for the philosophers' stone in 1669, yet
it was in such a search that phosphorus was discovered. Wilhelm Homberg
(1652-1715) described it in the following manner: Brand, "a man little
known, of low birth, with a bizarre and mysterious nature in all he
did, found this luminous matter while searching for something else. He
was a glassmaker by profession, but he had abandoned it in order to be
free for the pursuit of the philosophical stone with which he was
engrossed. Having put it into his mind that the secret of the
philosophical stone consisted in the preparation of urine, this man
worked in all kinds of manners and for a very long time without finding
anything. Finally, in the year 1669, after a strong distillation of
urine, he found in the recipient a luminant matter that has since been
called phosphorus. He showed it to some of his friends, among them
Mister Kunkel [sic]."[1]

Neither the name nor the phenomenon were really new. Organic
phosphorescent materials were known to Aristotle, and a lithophosphorus
was the subject of a book published in 1640, bas