Short answers, pulled from the story.
Platinum is a chemical element with symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is the most ductile of all pure metals, more ductile than gold, silver, or copper, and it does not corrode or oxidize in air at any temperature. Its extreme chemical stability and resistance to tarnish distinguish it from gold and silver.
South Africa produces the majority of the world's platinum, holding an almost 77% share in 2010, followed by Russia at 13%. The Merensky Reef within the Bushveld Igneous Complex in South Africa, discovered by geologist Hans Merensky in 1924, contains around 75% of the world's known platinum.
Antonio de Ulloa published the first systematic scientific study of platinum in 1748 after returning to Spain, where he also established the country's first mineralogy lab. The Italian humanist Julius Caesar Scaliger had provided the first European written reference to the metal in 1557, but did not study it scientifically.
Platinum acts as a catalyst that completes the combustion of unburned hydrocarbons in vehicle exhaust, converting them into carbon dioxide and water vapor. In 2007, German scientist Gerhard Ertl won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for determining the molecular mechanisms behind platinum's catalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide in catalytic converters.
Platinum-based drugs including cisplatin, carboplatin, and oxaliplatin are used in chemotherapy. These square planar platinum(II) compounds work by crosslinking DNA and killing cancer cells, and they are used to treat testicular and ovarian carcinomas, melanoma, lung cancer, myelomas, and lymphomas.
The name platinum comes from the Spanish platina, a diminutive of plata meaning silver. Spanish colonizers who first encountered platinum in South America viewed it as an impurity in gold, and an official decree was issued forbidding the adulteration of gold with platinum impurities, causing the metal to be routinely discarded.