Spectroscopic identification[edit]

There were no further discoveries for 30 years, and the element didymium was listed in the periodic
table of elements with a molecular mass of 138. In 1879, Delafontaine used the new physical
process of optical flame spectroscopy and found several new spectral lines in didymia. Also in
1879, Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran isolated the new element samarium from the
mineral samarskite.
The samaria earth was further separated by Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1886, and a similar result was
obtained by Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac by direct isolation from samarskite. They named
the element gadolinium after Johan Gadolin, and its oxide was named "gadolinia".
Further spectroscopic analysis between 1886 and 1901 of samaria, yttria, and samarskite by William
Crookes, Lecoq de Boisbaudran and Eugène-Anatole Demarçay yielded several new spectral
lines that indicated the existence of an unknown element. The fractional crystallization of the oxides
then yielded europium in 1901.
In 1839 the third source for rare earths became available. This is a mineral similar to gadolinite
called uranotantalum (now called "samarskite") an oxide of a mixture of elements such as yttrium,
ytterbium, iron, uranium, thorium, calcium, niobium, and tantalum. This mineral from Miass in the
southern Ural Mountains was documented by Gustav Rose. The Russian chemist R. Harmann
proposed that a new element he called "ilmenium" should be present in this mineral, but
later, Christian Wilhelm Blomstrand, Galissard de Marignac, and Heinrich Rose found
only tantalum and niobium (columbium) in it.
The exact number of rare-earth elements that existed was highly unclear, and a maximum number of
25 was estimated. The use of X-ray spectra (obtained by X-ray crystallography) by Henry Gwyn
Jeffreys Moseley made it possible to assign atomic numbers to the elements. Moseley found that the
exact number of lanthanides had to be 15, but that element 61 had not yet been discovered. (This is
promethium, a radioactive element whose most stable isotope has a half-life of just 18 years.)
Using these facts about atomic numbers from X-ray crystallography, Moseley also showed
that hafnium (element 72) would not be a rare-earth element. Moseley was killed in World War I in
1915, years before hafnium was discovered. Hence, the claim of Georges Urbain that he had
discovered element 72 was untrue. Hafnium is an element that lies in the periodic table immediately
below zirconium, and hafnium and zirconium have very similar chemical and physical properties.