French chemist · 1872–1938
Georges Urbain
Georges Urbain discovered lutetium in 1907, the last of the stable rare earths to be found, and named it after his home city.
How Lutetium was found
Urbain carried out thousands of crystallisations on Marignac’s ytterbia and showed it contained two elements. He named one neoytterbium and the other lutetium, after Lutetia, the Roman name for Paris.
Carl Auer von Welsbach and Charles James found the same element at about the same time. A committee chose Urbain’s name, though German chemists used Auer’s “cassiopeium” for decades. Urbain later claimed element 72, which he called celtium, but that claim did not survive the discovery of hafnium.
Shared the credit
The discovery is credited jointly to these scientists.
Life and career
Born 1872 · Died 1938
Urbain was born in Paris and studied at the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry. He became professor at the Sorbonne and later directed the Institute of Chemistry in Paris.
He was also an accomplished painter, sculptor and composer.
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1907.