Platinum Platinum Platinum is a chemical element with symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name is derived from the Spanish term "platino", meaning "little silver". Platinum is a member of the platinum group of elements and group 10 of the periodic table of elements. It has six naturally occurring isotopes. It is one of the rarer elements in Earth's crust, with an average abundance of approximately 5 μg/kg. It occurs in some nickel and copper ores along with some native deposits, mostly in South Africa, which accounts for
History of the periodic table of periodic table, which he named "Vis tellurique" (the 'telluric helix'), after the element tellurium, which fell near the center of his diagram. With the elements arranged in a spiral on a cylinder by order of increasing atomic weight, de Chancourtois saw that elements with similar properties lined up vertically. His 1863 publication included a chart (which contained ions and compounds, in addition to elements), but his original paper in the "Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences" used geological rather than chemical terms and did not include a diagram. As a result, de Chancourtois' ideas received little attention until after