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Rediscovery of the Elements
Yttrium and Johan Gadolin
James L. Marshall, Beta Eta 1 971, and
Virginia R. Marshall, Beta Eta 2003,
Department of Chemistry, University of
North Texas, Denton,TX 76203-5070,
jimmaunt.edu
The Beginning of the Rare Earths:
Ytterby. (Figure 1). For centuries the
Chinese were the masters of fine porcelain
manufacture. In 1708, Europe learned the art
when the two Germans, Johann Friedrich
B6ttger (1682-1719) and Ehrenfried Walther
von Tschirnhaus (1651-1708), discovered how
to make quality chinaware from feldspar and
quartz.' Swedish porcelain factories, such as
R6rstrand in Stockholm in 1726, developed a
great appetite for premium feldspar and quartz
available on Resar6 Island (Figure 2) in the
Swedish archipelago 20 kilometers northeast of
Stockholm.' On this island near the village of
Ytterby, a mine was developed (Figure 3) which
could furnish this profitable raw material in
abundance (Figures 4, 5, 6).
In 1787, a Swedish artillery officer and ama-
teur geologist, Lieutenant Carl Axel Arrhenius
(1757-1824), visited the Ytterby Mine"' and
noticed an unusual heavy black rock which
occurred in narrow layers through the mineral
quartz beds (Figure 7). He passed a specimen
on to Bengt Reinhold Geijer (1758-1815),
Inspector of Mines in Stockholm. A year later
Geijer announced' to the world the"heavy rock
that my friend Arrhenius found ... in Ytterby
three miles from Stockholm" (German Meile =
4.6 English miles). Geijer performed some pre-
liminary tests, such as"Berlinblau," proving the
existence of iron (reaction with potassium fer-
rocyanide to form the blue pigment "Prussian
blue"), and he speculated that perhaps the
"Schwerstein," ("heavy rock") contained
"Wolfram" (tungsten), recently discovered by
Scheele in 1781 in Koping, Sweden.;
For a complete chemical analysis of his
"Schwerstein" Arrhenius turned to Johan
Gadolin (1760-1852), (Figure 8) a professor at
the University of Abo in Turku, Finland (the city
A>
300 km -~.
04 Turku
Ytterby '
Stockholrrp
Figure 1. The history of the rare earths begins with
the Ytterby Mine, where the source mineral for
yttrium was found; and Abo (now called by the
Finnish name Turku), where Johan Gadolin dis-
covered yttrium in the Ytterby Mine specimen.
Ytterby, 20 km northeast of Stockholm, means
"Outer village"in Swedish.
274
og erby
N <1
Figure 2. The village of Ytterby on the island of
Resaro, historically could be reached only by boat.
It can now be accessed by road from Stockholm;
public transportation (bus) is also available.
was then called Abo, a part of Sweden). Johan
Gadolin, a native of Abo, had studied under
Torbern Bergman at Sweden's major university
at Uppsala and written a dissertation on the
analysis of iron.' In addition to his native
Swedish, he also was fluent in Latin, German,
English, French, Russian, and Finnish." He trav-
eled extensively through western Europe and
visited universities and mines in England,
Ireland, Holland, and Germany, finally return-
ing to the University of Abo in 1797.' Despite
Figure 3. The Ytterby Mine (N 59 25.60 E 18
21.21) can be reached directly from Ytterbyvagen
Qugen = road) on the eastern end of Resaro
Island. The slope leading up to the mine is littered
with numerous interesting minerals. About the
mine area are streets named Yttriunvagen~
Terbiumvigen, Gadolinitvagen, Faltspatsvagen,
Glimmnerviigen (glinnner = mica), Tantalvigen,
and Gruvv'gen (gruv = mine).
the high activity of chemical research in Paris,
he never visited France, possibly because of his
concern about the political climate there.'
Gadolin's important researches included
thermochemistry-he refined the values for the
heat of ice and showed it was identical to that
of snow 1-and the theory of combustion-his
textbook was the first in Swedish to promote
the new antiphlogiston theory of Lavoisier.
His best known contribution, however, is his
discovery of yttrium in the sample provided by
Lieutenant Arrhenius.
Even before the end of the phlogiston era,
the best analytical chemists of the late 1700s
possessed a laboratory skill that was astonish-
ingly accurate. The most famous analytical
chemists of the day were Louis Nicolas
Vauquelin (1763-1829) of Paris and Martin
Heinrich Klaproth (1743-1817) of Berlin. These
THE HEXAGON/SPRING 2008
The Beginning of
the Rare Earths
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