who was helium discovered by

Helium is generally credited as being discovered by the French astronomer Jules Janssen and the English astronomer Norman Lockyer in 1868, with later isolation on Earth by Sir William Ramsay, Per Teodor Cleve, and Nils Abraham Langlet in 1895.

Who first saw helium?

• During a solar eclipse in 1868, Jules Janssen observed an unusual yellow spectral line in the Sun’s chromosphere that did not match any known element at the time.

• Around the same time, Norman Lockyer observed the same yellow line from England and argued it came from a new element, which he named “helium” after Helios, the Greek sun god.

Why multiple names are involved

• Janssen and Lockyer are often described as joint discoverers because they independently recorded the same spectral line and their reports reached the French Academy on essentially the same day.

• Lockyer is especially associated with the discovery because he was the one who proposed that the line represented a new element and gave it the name helium.

Discovery of helium on Earth

• For years, helium was thought to exist only in the Sun, until Italian physicist Luigi Palmieri detected its spectral line in gases from Mount Vesuvius in 1882.

• In 1895, William Ramsay isolated helium from the uranium mineral cleveite; Per Teodor Cleve and Nils Abraham Langlet independently did the same, firmly establishing helium as a terrestrial element as well.

TL;DR: Helium was first detected in the Sun’s spectrum by Jules Janssen and Norman Lockyer in 1868, and later isolated on Earth by William Ramsay, Per Teodor Cleve, and Nils Abraham Langlet in 1895.