Adolf Patera

Adolf Patera (11 July 1819, in Vienna – 26 June 1894), was a Bohemian chemist, mineralogist and metallurgist, best known for the important role he played in the utilisation of uranium in colour production in glass, and associated with silver extraction from the mines at Joachimsthal, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now known as Jáchymov.

Martin Heinrich Klaproth, a chemist, found that it could be used in dye industry.

Adolf Patera was asked to examine the commercial possibilities of the new substance, and he presented a paper on the use of uranium to the Imperial Academy of Science in 1847, also describing a method of vanadium extraction from the uranium ores.

The lustrous fire-resistant dyes coming in so many shades of yellow, black, orange and green became extremely popular and they were used as a matter of course for Czech glass and porcelain decoration, with burgeoning exports to Great Britain and France.

Uranium glass is considered to be harmless and only marginally more active than background radiation.