History+of+Helium

The word "Helium" came from the Greek word "//helios//" meaning sun. Pierre-Jules-César Janssen, a French astronomer, noticed a yellow line in the sun's spectrum while studying a total solar eclipse in India in 1868. Sir Norman Lockyer, an English astronomer, realized that this line could not be produced by any element known so far. People thought that a new element on the sun was responsible for this mysterious yellow emission. The hunt to find helium on earth was ended in 1895 by Sir William Ramsay, a Scottish chemist who proved it to be an element.