Samarium

By John Emsley2015-07-03T00:00:00

John Emsley looks at a low profile element with some valuable applications

The first person to have a chemical element named after them, albeit indirectly, was Colonel Vasili Samarsky-Bykhovets. He was a Russian mine official in the Urals from 1845 to 1861 who granted access to mineral samples for scientific research. One of the minerals from his mine, samarskite, was named after him and one of the elements that would later be discovered within it was named samarium.

Samarium’s story begins with the metal cerium, which was discovered in 1803. Although it was little more than a chemical curiosity for the next hundred years, today samarium has many uses, for example in ceramics, lasers and medicine.

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