A French chemist carried out the electrolysis of hydrofluoric acid with the help of the device made of platinum tubes and finally got fluorine. The long history of obtaining this substance is known by its extremely aggressive character. Fluorine violently interacts with almost everything it manages to reach. Fluoride has several lives: it killed Irish physicist Thomas Knox, Belgian scientist Layette, French physicist Niclausse. It also poisoned or burned: Humphrey Davy, Louis Thénard, Joseph Gay-Lussac and many others, not excluding Moissan – when he reported his discovery to the Paris Academy of Sciences, one eye of the scientist was covered with a black bandage. But the scientist’s work was rewarded: next year, in 1906 the discovery brought him the Nobel Prize.
