History
In 1878, erbium ores were found to contain the oxides of holmium and thulium. French chemist Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, while working with holmium oxide, separated dysprosium oxide from it in Paris in 1886. His procedure for isolating the dysprosium involved dissolving dysprosium oxide in acid, then adding ammonia to precipitate the hydroxide. He was only able to isolate dysprosium from its oxide after more than 30 attempts at his procedure. Upon succeeding, he named the element dysprosium from the Greek dysprositos (δυσπρόσιτος), meaning "hard to get". However, the element was not isolated in relatively pure form until after the development of ion exchange techniques by Frank Spedding at Iowa State University in the early 1950s.
In 1950, Glenn T. Seaborg, Albert Ghiorso, and Stanley G. Thompson bombarded 241Am with helium ions, which produced atoms with an atomic number of 97 and which closely resembled the neighboring lanthanide terbium. Because terbium was named after Ytterby, the city in which it and several other elements were discovered, this new element was named berkelium for the city in which it was synthesized. However, when the research team synthesized element 98, they could not think of a good analogy for dysprosium, and instead named the element californium in honor of the state in which it was synthesized. The research team went on to "point out that, in recognition of the fact that dysprosium is named on the basis of a Greek word meaning 'difficult to get at,' that the searchers for another element a century ago found it difficult to get to California."
Read more about this topic: Dysprosium
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