French chemist and spectroscopist · 1852–1903
Eugène-Anatole Demarçay
Eugène-Anatole Demarçay discovered europium in 1901 and was the spectroscopist the Curies trusted to confirm radium.
How Europium was found
Lecoq de Boisbaudran had noticed in 1890 that samarium samples showed lines that did not belong to it. Demarçay spent years refining samarium and gadolinium by repeated crystallisation and in 1896 suspected a new element.
By 1901 he had separated it well enough to be sure, and named it europium, after Europe. Its compounds glow red under ultraviolet light, which is why europium is used in banknotes and in the red phosphors of screens.
Life and career
Born 1852 · Died 1903
Demarçay was born in Paris and worked largely in his own laboratory. He lost an eye in a laboratory explosion.
In 1898 he examined the Curies’ radium samples and found a new spectral line, giving the first independent evidence that radium was an element.
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1901.