Discovery of ytterbium

Ytterbium was discovered in 1878 by the Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac in Geneva, who separated it from erbia, one of the oxides that had been extracted from the mineral gadolinite. It is named after Ytterby, a village in Sweden near Stockholm where the mineral was found, as are yttrium, terbium and erbium. Marignac's new oxide was later found to contain another element, lutetium. Ytterbium is a soft, silvery rare earth metal. It is used in lasers, in stainless steel as an additive, and in some of the most precise atomic clocks, whose accuracy rivals or exceeds that of caesium clocks. An isotope is also used as a portable source of X-rays when nuclear radiation sources are unavailable.

Open on the timeline