Discovery date : 1907
Discovered by: Georges Urbain in Paris, France
and independently by Charles James in New Hampshire, USA
Origin of the name: The name derives from the Romans' name for Paris, 'Lutetia'.
Allotropes :
~>LUTETIUM is a chemical element with symbol Lu and atomic number 71. It is a silvery white metal, which resists corrosion in dry air, but not in moist air.
| FACT BOX | |||
| Group | Lanthanides | Melting point | 1663°C, 3025°F, 1936 K |
| Period | 6 | Boiling point | 3402°C, 6156°F, 3675 K |
| Block | f | Density (g cm−3) | 9.84 |
| Atomic number | 71 | Relative atomic mass | 174.967 |
| State at 20°C | Solid | Key isotopes | 175Lu |
| Electron configuration | [Xe] 4f145d16s2 | CAS number | 7439-94-3 |
| ChemSpider ID | 22371 | ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database | |
The honour of discovering lutetium went to Georges Urbain at the Sorbonne in Paris, because he was the first to report it. The story began with the discovery of yttrium in 1794 from which several other elements – the rare earths (aka lanthanoids) – were to be separated, starting with erbium in 1843 and ending with lutetium in 1907.
Other chemists, namely Karl Auer in Germany and Charles James in the USA, were about to make the same discovery. Indeed James, who was at the University of New Hampshire, was ahead of Urbain and had extracted quite a lot of the new metal, but he delayed publishing his research. A sample of pure lutetium metal itself was not made until 1953.