Aluminum, or aluminium, is a silvery-white metal which has the atomic number 13. Its atomic weight is 26.98154 and its symbol is Al. Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust (8.1%), yet it does not occur naturally in any pure form. This accounts for its relatively late appearance as a popular metal.

Alum, a compound of aluminum and potassium, was used as an astringent, or binding, mineral salt as far back as Roman times. Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau (1737-1816) recognized the base material in alum and called it alumine in 1761. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, in 1787, first raised the suspicion that alumine might be a new metal. The first attempt to produce aluminum was by Sir Humphry Davy in London in 1807. He succeeded in creating an alloy consisting of aluminum and iron. The name aluminium was proposed by Davy and accepted by most of the world. More than a hundred...