Discovery of scandium

Scandium was discovered in 1879 by the Swedish chemist Lars Fredrik Nilson at Uppsala University, who extracted it from the rare minerals euxenite and gadolinite. He named it after Scandinavia. A few months later his compatriot Per Teodor Cleve recognised that it matched the element that Dmitri Mendeleev had predicted ten years earlier under the name eka-boron, with very similar atomic weight and properties. It was a further confirmation of the periodic table, following gallium. Metallic scandium was not produced in pure form until 1937, and it is expensive because it is so widely dispersed and so hard to extract. Today small amounts are added to aluminium to make strong, light alloys used in aircraft parts, bicycle frames and sports equipment.

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