Ytterbium (Yb)

Ytterbium metal ingot - one troy ounce - .999 bullion   Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac separated ytterbia from erbia in 1878 and named it after the nearby village of Ytterby, Sweden. It wasn't until 1907 that Georges Urbain, a French chemist separated ytterbia into ytterbium and lutetium and despite disputes over naming rights among other chemists from Austria and America who separated these two rare earths at about the same time, Marignac and Urbain were eventually credited by The Commission on Atomic Mass with the discoveries of ytterbium and lutetium respectively. It wasn't until ion exchange techniques were developed in the 1950s that pure samples of either were obtained and their true chemical and physical properties became known. Ytterbium has some unique properties relative to the other rare earth elements. It has paramagnetic and diamagnetic properties at different temperatures and in different allotropic forms. It has the smallest liquid range (670 °F) of all the metals.