By Dr Justine Butler, Viva! Health’s Senior Researcher & Writer www.vivahealth.org.uk
Selenium was discovered in 1817 by a Swedish chemist called Jöns Jacob Berzelius. It was very similar to the recently discovered tellurium, which had been named after the Latin word for earth ‘tellus’. Berzelius kept the celestial theme going and named his new discovery selenium, after ‘selene’, the Greek name for the moon.