Discovery Information
|
| Who: Georges Urbain |
| When: 1907 |
| Where: France |
|
Name Origin
|
| From Lutetia the ancient name of Paris. |
|
Sources
|
| Found with ytterbium in gadolinite and xenotime. |
|
Uses
|
| This element is very expensive to obtain in useful quantities and therefore it has very few commercial uses. Used in alloys and can be used as a catalyst in cracking, hydrogenation, polymerization and alkylation.
|
|
Notes
|
| Because of the difficulty in producing pure lutetium it is one of the most expensive metals, costing around six times as much
per gram as gold.
|