Jabir ibn Hayyan 5 (An Islamic Scientist)

 By mixing hydrochloric acid with nitric acid he invented a supper acid called aqua regia which could dissolve even gold. He also isolated citric acid from lemon and tartaric acid from the residue left after wine making. The discoveries of these acids especially aqua regia helped the chemists to extract and purify gold and other metals for the next thousand years. This can be considered as a land- mark achievement in the field of chemistry more than thousand year ago. Jabir divided the substance into three categories; first group he called Spirits substance which vaporize on heating, like sulfur, ammonium chloride, camphor and arsenic etc, second group he called Metals like copper, silver, gold, iron and lead etc the third group he called Non-malleable like rocks, charcoal .