Sir William Hyde Wollaston was an English physicist and chemist, and he’s famous for discovering palladium and rhodium. While palladium has gone on to become a highly tradable commodity in the world market, rhodium is less well known. Yet it too is quite valuable to society as well as in finance.

After it was discovered back in 1804, scientists of the time didn’t really have much use for it. It’s very rare, for one thing. Another problem with rhodium is that it is very difficult to shape. It isn’t malleable and it has a high melting point.

But as the years passed, it was used as electroplating for jewelry and for corrosion-resistant coating. And when the catalytic converter was invented in 1976, demand for the metal increased substantially, as it was deemed necessary for the manufacture of this new vital automotive component.