Noble gas After the risks caused by the flammability of hydrogen became apparent, it was replaced with helium in blimps and balloons. "Noble gas" is translated from the German noun , first used in 1898 by Hugo Erdmann to indicate their extremely low level of reactivity. The name makes an analogy to the term "noble metals", which also have low reactivity. The noble gases have also been referred to as "inert gases", but this label is deprecated as many noble gas compounds are now known. "Rare gases" is another term that was used, but this is also inaccurate because argon forms a
Noble gas a noble gas until 1904 when its characteristics were found to be similar to those of other noble gases. Rayleigh and Ramsay received the 1904 Nobel Prizes in Physics and in Chemistry, respectively, for their discovery of the noble gases; in the words of J. E. Cederblom, then president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, "the discovery of an entirely new group of elements, of which no single representative had been known with any certainty, is something utterly unique in the history of chemistry, being intrinsically an advance in science of peculiar significance". The discovery of the noble gases