Discovery of samarium

Samarium was discovered in 1879 by the French chemist Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who found it by spectroscopy in the mineral samarskite, after separating it from a mixture then thought to be a single element, didymium. He named it after the mineral, which had in turn been named in honour of Vasili Samarsky-Bykhovets, a Russian mining official. This made samarium the first element whose name derives, if indirectly, from a person's name. It is a silvery metal of the rare earth group. Samarium-cobalt magnets, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, are strong and resist heat, and are used in headphones, motors and aerospace components. A radioactive isotope of samarium is used to relieve pain from cancer that has spread to the bones.

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