1/2 Dollar William Gregor

Nauru's titanium issues from this period occupy an odd corner of numismatics — the island nation has no indigenous coinage tradition and functions as a mint client state, producing collector pieces underwritten almost entirely by foreign distributors. This particular piece honors William Gregor, the Cornish clergyman and amateur mineralogist who in 1791 identified an unknown metallic oxide in ilmenite ore from the Helford River valley, a discovery he called manaccanite. The metal was independently characterized two years later by German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who named it titanium and received most of the lasting credit.