Christian Gmelin observes in 1818 that salts of lithium color flames bright red.

Neither Gmelin nor Johan August Arfwedson, in attempting reductions by heating the oxide with iron or carbon, succeed in isolating the element itself from its salts.

Chemist William Thomas Brande and electrochemist Sir Humphry Davy later isolate the metal in pure form, producing a minute quantity by the electrolysis of lithium oxide (or lithium carbonate?).