The element aluminum is first isolated by Friedrich Wöhler, due to the isolation of the elements yttrium, beryllium, and titanium, the observation that "silicium" (silicon) can be obtained in crystals, and that some meteoric stones contain organic matter.

Wöhler analyzes meteorites, and for many years has written the digest on the literature of meteorites in the Jahresberichte über die Fortschritte der Chemie; he possesses the best private collection of meteoric stones and irons existing.

He and Henri Étienne Sainte Claire Deville had discovered the crystalline form of boron, and Wöhler and Heinrich Buff discover silane in 1856.

Wöhler also prepared urea, a constituent of urine, from ammonium cyanate in the laboratory without the help of a living cell.

French metallurgists Jules Henri Debray and Henri Étienne Deville examine alloys of platinum and iridium for the Russian government in 1873 to determine their suitability for coinage.

Jules Henri Debray and Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville separate pure iridium from the platinum metals in 1874, while Henry Tresco and George Matthey, under the supervision of Debray and Deville, fuse and cast the standard meter in Paris using a ten percent platinum-iridium alloy. (Platinum will be used as an adulterant for gold at the beginning of the twentieth century, but it is now considered the more valuable of the two metals.)

Henri Jules Debray and Henri Étienne Deville, French metallurgists, separate pure osmium from the platinum group metals in 1876, their object being on the one hand to prepare pure forms of the platinum group metals, and on the other to find a suitable metal for the standard meter for the International Metric Commission currently sitting at Paris.

Debray and Sainte-Claire Deville successfully isolate pure ruthenium from the platinum metals in 1879.