Magnesium the water's bitter taste, but the farmer noticed that the water seemed to heal scratches and rashes. The substance became known as Epsom salts and its fame spread. It was eventually recognized as hydrated magnesium sulfate, ·7. The metal itself was first isolated by Sir Humphry Davy in England in 1808. He used electrolysis on a mixture of magnesia and mercuric oxide. Antoine Bussy prepared it in coherent form in 1831. Davy's first suggestion for a name was magnium, but the name magnesium is now used. Magnesium is the third-most-commonly-used structural metal, following iron and aluminium. The main applications of
Low valent magnesium compounds Low valent magnesium compounds A number of stable low valent magnesium compounds containing a metal-metal, Mg-Mg, bond, where magnesium exhibits the formal oxidation state of +1 are known. These compounds generally have the formula LMg, where L represents a bulky ligand. The first examples of these stable magnesium(I) compounds were reported in 2007. The chemistry of Mg is dominated by the +2 oxidation state and prior to 2007 only examples of crystalline compounds with short Mg-Mg distances that may indicate an Mg-Mg bond were known, such as the ternary metal hydrides MgRuH, MgRuH, and MgIrH and magnesium diboride, Calculations had