After whom or what is the element Krypton named?

Krypton is named after the Greek word "kryptos" meaning hidden. Krypton is one of the noble gases. It was discovered by William Ramsay and Morris Travers of University College, London in 1898. They had discovered Argon in 1894 which they had extracted from air. They were convinced that it was the first of a series of new elements and that others were 'hidden' in the Argon.

By using liquefaction and evaporation, they were able to separate another gas which they identified as a different element using spectroscopy and hence Krypton was discovered. William Ramsay went on to discover Neon and Xenon in the same year using similar techniques.

Krypton is used commercially as a filling gas for energy-saving fluorescent lights. It is also used in some flash lamps used for high-speed photography.