Discovery of holmium

Holmium was identified in 1878 by the Swiss chemists Marc Delafontaine and Jacques-Louis Soret in Geneva, who noticed unusual spectral lines in samples of erbia and called the new element element X. In 1879 the Swedish chemist Per Teodor Cleve, working in Uppsala, independently separated it chemically and named it holmium after Holmia, the Latin name for his native Stockholm. The pure metal was prepared much later. Holmium is a soft, silvery rare earth metal that has the strongest magnetic properties of all the elements. It is used in strong magnets, in nuclear reactor controls, and in lasers, particularly in medical applications where holmium lasers are used to break up kidney stones and to treat prostate conditions.

Open on the timeline