Discovery date : 1880
Discovered by: Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac
Origin of the name: Gadolinium was named in honour of Johan Gadolin.
Allotropes :
~>GADOLINIUM is a chemical element with symbol Gd and atomic number 64. Gadolinium is a silvery-white, malleable, and ductile rare earth metal.
| FACT BOX | |||
| Group | Lanthanides | Melting point | 1313°C, 2395°F, 1586 K |
| Period | 6 | Boiling point | 3273°C, 5923°F, 3546 K |
| Block | f | Density (g cm−3) | 7.90 |
| Atomic number | 64 | Relative atomic mass | 157.25 |
| State at 20°C | Solid | Key isotopes | 158Gd |
| Electron configuration | [Xe] 4f75d16s2 | CAS number | 7440-54-2 |
| ChemSpider ID | 22418 | ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database | |
Gadolinium was discovered in 1880 by Charles Galissard de Marignac at Geneva. He had long suspected that the didymium reported by Carl Mosander was not a new element but a mixture. His suspicions were confirmed when Marc Delafontaine and Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran at Paris reported that its spectral lines varied according to the source from which it came. Indeed, in 1879 they had already separated samarium from some didymium which had been extracted from the mineral samarskite, found in the Urals. In 1880, Marignac extracted yet another new rare earth from didymium, as did Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1886, and it was the latter who called it gadolinium.