Boron was first isolated in 1808, nearly simultaneously by Humphry Davy in England and by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis Jacques Thenard in France, though none obtained it pure. Its name is a compound: bor- from borax, the mineral in which its compounds were long known, plus the -on ending borrowed from carbon, which it superficially resembles.
Borax itself carries an old name, passing through Arabic buraq and Persian burah, and much of the borax used in medieval Europe came overland from the dry lake beds of Tibet, where it was called tincal. Boron itself is a hard, dark metalloid and an essential trace nutrient for plants; its compounds are used in heat-resistant borosilicate glass, in ceramics, enamels and detergents, and, as boron carbide and boron nitride, in some of the hardest cutting and abrasive materials known. Boron's most distinctive nuclear property is the exceptional appetite of its boron-10 isotope for neutrons, which makes the element a standard material for reactor control rods, shielding and emergency shutdown systems, and underlies boron neutron capture therapy, an experimental cancer treatment that concentrates boron in tumour cells before irradiation. The element also has no stable allotrope resembling a familiar metal or gas: amorphous and crystalline boron differ sharply in appearance and reactivity, another mark of its unusual, carbon-like versatility among the light elements.