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In 1794, Johan Gadolin, a Finnish chemist, while investigating a rare Swedish mineral, discovered a new earth in impure form, which he believed to be a new element and to which he gave the name ytterbia, from Ytterby, the village where the ore was found. The name, however, was soon shortened to yttria. In 1803, from the same mineral, later named gadolinite in Gadolin’s honour, another new earth...
Johan Gadolin in 1794 isolated yttria, a new earth or metallic oxide, from a mineral found at Ytterby, Sweden. Yttria, the first rare earth to be discovered, turned out to be a mixture of oxides from which, over a span of more than a century, nine elements, yttrium, scandium (atomic number 21), and the heavy lanthanoid metals from terbium (atomic number 65) to lutetium (atomic number 71), were...
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