[1] It is a radioactive, hydrated green copper uranyl phosphate, found in granites and other uranium-bearing deposits as a secondary mineral.

Torbernite was found for the first time at Georg Wagsfort Mine near Johanngeorgenstadt in the Erzgebirge Mountains in Saxony.

It was first mentioned in 1772 by Ignaz von Born in his work Lythophylacium Bornianum, calling it "mica viridis crystallina, ibid."

In 1780 Abraham Gottlob Werner uses Born's work and describes the mineral in more detail, calling it at first "grüner Glimmer" (green mica), later naming it "torbernite" in honour of the Swedish mineralogist and chemist Torbern Olof Bergman (1735–1784).

In these studies they were able to finally analyse the crystal structure of torbernite for the very first time, and to get a significantly more precise analysis for the structure of metatorbernite, compared with previous studies (Makarov and Tobelko R1 = 25%,[9] Ross et al. R1 = 9.7%,[10] Stergiou et al. R1 = 5.6%,[11] Calos and Kennard R1 = 9.2%[12] vs. Locock und Burns R1 = 2.3%).

[1] The crystal structure of metatorbernite is different from torbernite as every second uranyl phosphate layer is moved about one half of the length of the crystallographic a-axis in the directions [100] and [010].

The authors assume that by protonation of some of the water molecules there is a charge compensation for electronic neutrality, as it is discussed with the mineral chernikovite.

This is in accord with the works by Arthur Francis Hallimons[13][16] and Kurt Walenta,[17] who show that the different steps of hydration between torbernite and metatorbernite have clear boundaries, and the water content of each compound remains constant and does not vary, in contrast for instance, as seen in minerals of the zeolite group.

Further localities are in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, France, Gabon, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Madagascar, Mexico, Namibia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, the United Kingdom and the United States.