The term "element" in "the simplest part of whole" value was used still in the ancient time. The concept "chemical element" was entered by John Dalton, and definition to chemical element is final it was given in 1860.
Opening of the concept "chemical element"
The word "element" was used still by philosophers of antiquity – such concept can be found in Cicero, Horace, Ovidiya's works, it meant a part something whole. Ancient scientists assumed that the world around consists of a set of elements, but before opening of the present chemical laws was still far. Only in the 17th century for the first time the word "element" was used in modern value though the first chemical elements were not discovered yet. But scientists already realized the fact that new materials turn out by means of change of set of elements which make them. The old idea of elements principles which is in a statement that it is possible to receive new substance, adding or taking away certain qualities (hardness, dryness, fluidity), began to recede into the background – so the alchemy was succeeded by chemistry.
One of the first the term "chemical element" in close to modern value was used by the English physicist and the chemist Robert Boyle who called so corpuscles, indecomposable on other parts, which make all bodies. He considered that elements are different in a form, the weight and the size.
In 1789 the chemist Lavoisier provided the first list of chemical elements in one of the works though exact definition was not given to this concept yet. It allocated the simplest, from his point of view, bodies which cannot be spread out to other parts. A part really corresponded to chemical elements – sulfur, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, coal, but this list included also light and a so-called heatsort, a source of the thermal phenomena. In 1803 John Dalton the first entered the concept "chemical element". He extended the idea that all atoms of a certain element are identical on the characteristics. Simple substances as Dalton considered, consist of atoms of one look, and difficult of several types. He pointed by the first that atomic weight in many respects defines properties of elements. In 1860 the first exact definitions of atom and a molecule were given that completed formation of the concept "chemical element". Today understand a complex of atoms with an identical charge of a kernel and identical quantity of protons as this term. There are chemical elements in the form of simple or single-element substances.
Discovery of the first chemical elements
Many chemical elements were discovered long before this concept was described. In an extreme antiquity it was known of gold, silver, iron, copper, tin, zinc, sulfur. In the Middle Ages phosphorus was found, and in the 18th century platinum, nitrogen, oxygen, manganese and other elements are discovered. Properties of hydrogen were observed by Boyle, Paracelsus and other alchemists and chemists, and Lomonosov the first described receiving hydrogen. The name was thought up by the chemist Lavoisier, he included hydrogen in the list of the simplest bodies. In the 19th century several dozen elements were open: magnesium, calcium, palladium, silicon, vanadium, bromine, helium, neon and others. Chemical element last for today is found in 2010 - it is ununseptium.