Eight years previously Sir William Herschel, the German-born English astronomer, had discovered a new planet and named it Uranus after the earliest supreme god of Greek mythology, son and husband of Gaea, father of Titans and Cyclopes, whose son Chronus with Gaea’s help castrated him and from whose wounded blood, falling then on Earth, the three vengeful Furies sprang. To honor Herschel’s discovery Klaproth named his new metal uranium.
