The Swede Nils Sefstrom discovered vanadium and gave it the alternative name of the goddess Freyja: Vanadis, the Dis of the Vanir, meaning the lady of the fair people, goddess of love, beauty, and fertility. Vanadium had actually already been discovered in 1801 by Manuel Del Rio of the Mexico City Mining School, a mineralogist of Spanish origins, who found it in a previously unknown mineral he called panchromium. But in 1803, the Frenchman Alexander von Humboldt declared it to be nothing more than simple chromium. Manuel Del Rio bowed to the judgement, but he was right.
