Daniel Rutherford, a medical student in Edinburgh, is usually credited with the discovery of nitrogen (1772) because he was first to publish his findings; but in England the chemists Joseph Priestley and Henry Cavendish and in Sweden the chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele also discovered it about the same time. The French chemist Antoine Lavoisier (Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent) first recognized the gas as an element and named it azote because of its inability to support life (Greek zōē, “life”). The present name (from “nitre” plus the suffix “-gen,” thus “nitre-forming”) was coined in 1790 to indicate the presence of the element in nitre (ordinary saltpetre, or potassium nitrate, KNO₃).

Among the elements, nitrogen ranks sixth in cosmic abundance. It occurs in the Earth's atmosphere to the extent of 78 percent by volume, or about 75 percent by weight. Free nitrogen also is found in many meteorites; in gases of volcanoes, mines, and some mineral springs; in the Sun; and in some stars and nebulae. In combination it is found in the minerals nitre and Chile saltpetre (sodium nitrate, NaNO₃); in the atmosphere, rain, soil, and guano as ammonia and ammonium salts; in seawater as ammonium (NH₄⁺), nitrite (NO₂^-), and nitrate (NO₃^-) ions; and in living organisms as complex organic compounds such as proteins.

Animals obtain the nitrogen of their tissue proteins from vegetable or other animal proteins of food. Plants synthesize their proteins from inorganic nitrogen compounds from soil and to some extent from uncombined nitrogen in the air. A bacterium living in the roots of leguminous plants, such as peas, beans, clover, alfalfa, and peanuts, assimilates atmospheric nitrogen. Certain free-living anaerobic bacteria and blue-green algae also can extract nitrogen from the air. Other microorganisms in soils convert ammonium salts to nitrates. Lightning and sunlight cause a limited amount of nitrogen to combine with atmospheric oxygen, forming several oxides that are conveyed by rain in the form of nitric and nitrous acids to the soil, where they are neutralized, becoming nitrates and nitrites. The nitrogen content of cultivated soil is generally enriched and renewed artificially by fertilizers containing nitrates and ammonium salts. Excretion and decay of animals and plants return nitrogen compounds to the soil and air, and some bacteria in soil decompose nitrogen compounds and return the element to the air.

Inhaled nitrogen dissolves slightly in the blood and in other body fluids; under increased pressure, the amount dissolved is greater. The bends, or decompression sickness, is caused mainly by bubbles of nitrogen coming out of solution in the bloodstreams of persons such as divers, aviators, and those who work in deep caissons on whom the air pressure has been reduced too quickly.

Commercially, nitrogen is prepared almost entirely by the fractional distillation of liquid air. Nitrogen, which has a lower boiling point (-195.8° C, or -320.4° F) than oxygen (-183.0° C, or -297.4° F), tends to evaporate first. On a small scale, pure nitrogen is made from its compounds, for example, by heating ammonium nitrite, NH₄NO₂, or barium azide, Ba(N₃)₂.

Chemically, nitrogen gas is quite inert, especially at ordinary temperatures. Owing to its inertness, nitrogen gas is utilized in the chemical industry as a diluent or as a blanket to exclude oxygen and moisture. The low temperature (and inertness) of nitrogen in the liquid state make it suitable for freeze-drying food and as a refrigerant when transporting perishable commodities. Liquid nitrogen also has proved useful in cryogenic research.

Natural nitrogen on Earth consists of a mixture of two stable isotopes, nitrogen-14 (99.63 percent) and nitrogen-15 (0.37 percent). The first artificially induced nuclear transmutation was reported (1919) by a British physicist, Ernest Rutherford (Rutherford, Ernest, Baron Rutherford of Nelson, of Cambridge), who bombarded nitrogen-14 with alpha particles to form oxygen-17 nuclei and protons. Three other radioactive isotopes are known: nitrogen-12, nitrogen-13, and nitrogen-16.

Most elemental nitrogen is consumed in the manufacture of nitrogen compounds.

Large quantities of nitrogen are used together with hydrogen to produce ammonia, NH₃, a colourless gas with a pungent, irritating odour. The chief commercial method of synthesizing ammonia is the Haber-Bosch process. Ammonia is one of the two principal nitrogen compounds of commerce; it has numerous uses in the manufacture of other important nitrogen compounds. A large portion of commercially synthesized ammonia is converted into nitric acid (HNO₃) and nitrates, which are the salts and esters of nitric acid. Much ammonia is used in the ammonia-soda process (Solvay process) to produce soda ash, Na₂CO₃. Ammonia is also utilized in the preparation of hydrazine, N₂H₄, a colourless liquid used as a rocket fuel and in many industrial processes.

Nitric acid is the other main commercial compound of nitrogen. A colourless, highly corrosive liquid, it is much used in the production of fertilizers (fertilizer), dyes, drugs, and explosives. Ammonium nitrate (NH₄NO₃), a salt of ammonia and nitric acid, is the most common nitrogenous component of artificial fertilizers.

With oxygen, nitrogen forms several oxides, including nitrous oxide, N₂O, in which nitrogen is in the +1 oxidation state; nitric oxide, NO, in which it is in the +2 state; and nitrogen dioxide, NO₂, in which it is in the +4 state. Many of the nitrogen oxides are extremely volatile; they are prime sources of pollution in the atmosphere. nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, is sometimes used as an anesthetic; when inhaled it produces mild hysteria. nitric oxide reacts rapidly with oxygen to form brown nitrogen dioxide, an intermediate in the manufacture of nitric acid and a powerful oxidizing agent utilized in chemical processes and rocket fuels.

Also of some importance are certain nitrides (nitride), solids formed by direct combination of metals with nitrogen, usually at elevated temperatures. They include hardening agents produced when alloy steels are heated in an atmosphere of ammonia, a process called nitriding. Those of boron, titanium, zirconium, and tantalum have special applications. One crystalline form of boron nitride (BN), for example, is nearly as hard as diamond and less easily oxidized and so is useful as a high-temperature abrasive.

The inorganic cyanides contain the group CN^-. hydrogen cyanide, or formonitrile, HCN, is a highly volatile and extremely poisonous gas that is used in fumigation, ore concentration, and various other industrial processes. Cyanogen, or oxalonitrile, (CN)₂, is also used as a chemical intermediate and a fumigant.

Azides (azide), which may be either inorganic or organic, are compounds that contain three nitrogen atoms as a group, represented as (−N₃). Most azides are unstable and highly sensitive to shock. Some of them, such as lead azide 【Pb(N₃)₂】, are used in detonators and percussion caps. The azides, like the halogen compounds, readily react with other substances by displacement of the so-called azide group and yield many kinds of compounds.

Nitrogen forms many thousands of organic compounds. Most of the known varieties may be regarded as derived from ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, cyanogen, and nitrous or nitric acid. The amines, amino acids, and amides, for example, are derived from or closely related to ammonia. Nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose are esters of nitric acid. Nitro compounds are obtained from the reaction (called nitration) between nitric acid and an organic compound. Nitrites are derived from nitrous acid (HNO₂). Nitroso compounds are obtained by the action of nitrous acid on an organic compound. Purines and alkaloids are heterocyclic compounds in which nitrogen replaces one or more carbon atoms.