Overview

Strontium takes its name from Strontian, a village in the western Highlands of Scotland where the mineral strontianite was found in a lead mine; the new earth in it was recognised in the 1790s, and the metal was isolated by Humphry Davy in 1808. It is the only element named after a place in the United Kingdom. Strontium is a soft, silvery alkaline-earth metal, best known for the vivid crimson it lends to fireworks and flares. Strontium salts burn with a characteristic red flame, the source of the reds in pyrotechnics and warning flares, and were long used in the glass of cathode-ray television tubes; the pure metal itself has few structural applications.

Strontium aluminate compounds are the active ingredient in most modern glow-in-the-dark pigments, absorbing light and releasing it slowly in the dark for hours, a safer successor to the radium-based luminous paints once used for the same effect before radium's radioactivity was understood to be dangerous. In medicine, strontium ranelate was developed and marketed in the 2000s as a treatment to strengthen bone in osteoporosis, since strontium can substitute for calcium in bone mineral, though later evidence of increased cardiovascular risk led European regulators to sharply restrict its use.