Helium was discovered in 1868 by Pierre-Jules-César Janssen, a French astronomer. He noticed a yellow ring around the sun. Sir Norman Lockyer, an English astronomer, realised that this was the element helium. There was then a hunt to find helium on earth. This ended in 1895, when Sir William Ramsay, a Scottish chemist, conducted an experiment with a mineral containing uranium called clevite. He exposed it to mineral acids and collected the gases that were produced. He then sent a sample of these gases to two scientists, Lockyer and Sir William Crookes, who were able to identify the helium within
