Beryllium was the first of the S-block metals to be discovered. The French scientist, Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, identified the element in 1798, after analysis of beryl and emerald.
Six members of the series were discovered in quick succession, after the development of electrolysis made possible the isolation of especially reactive elements. In 1807, the English scientist, Sir Humphry Davy succeeded in isolating both sodium and potassium by electrolytic means, and the following year, by the same method, he isolated magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium.
Lithium was the next S-block metal to be discovered, identified by the Swedish chemist, Johann August Arfvedson, in 1817.
As was the case with the elements discovered by Davy, a newly invented scientific method allowed the identification of rubidium and caesium. Having developed spectroscopy in 1859, the German scientists, Robert Wilhelm von Bunsen and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, discovered caesium in 1860 and rubidium in 1861 by means of their vividly-coloured spectral lines.
As might be expected, the two radioactive members of the series, radium and francium, were the last to be discovered. Radium was discovered in 1898 by Pierre and Marie Curie, and francium in 1939 by Marguerite Perey. Again, it took an important scientific advance - in this case, the discovery of radioactivity by Becquerel in 1896 - before the elements could be identified.
