Johan Gadolin, a Finnish chemist, was born June 5, 1760. In 1794, Gadolin announced the discovery of a new element, which he had isolated from a mineral found in the Swedish town of Ytterby, near Stockholm. Actually, he had isolated an oxide, but there was a new element in that oxide, which we call yttrium, after the town; a modern photo of pure Yttrium is shown above. The mineral that contained yttrium would later be named Gadolinite. Now, the interesting thing is that, during the next century, in that single ore Gadolinite, there would be found nine other new elements, with names like erbium, ytterbium, terbium (all named after that one town). That is ten percent of the entire periodic table! These form the bulk of what are called the rare earth elements, or lanthanides, and if you vaguely remember your periodic table (or if you peek at the table above), you will recall that at the bottom, removed from the major array, there are two rows of elements that don’t fit very well into the table. The top row are the lanthanides, elements 57 to 71. Right in the middle of the lanthanide row is the 64th element, discovered in 1886. It is named gadolinium, after our Finnish chemist of the day.
Dr. William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City
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