YTTERBY

'Ytterby' is a village on the Swedish island of Resarö, near Vaxholm in the Stockholm archipelago, and is located northeast of the Vaxholm municipality. Lending its name to a famous quarry where many rare earth minerals have been discovered, the small village has been the inspiration for naming four chemical elements on the Periodic Table: Yttrium(Y), Ytterbium(Yb), Terbium(Tb) and Erbium(Er).
Three other elements also trace their origin to the Ytterby quarry: Gadolinium (Gd) (named after gadolinite, which is named after Professor Johan Gadolin), Holmium (Ho) (from the Latin name for Stockholm), and Thulium (Tm) (Thule is an old Latin word for the Nordic countries).

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See also

References

See also

★ Discoveries of the chemical elements

★ Geography of Stockholm

References

★ Ytterby gruva Blom, Carl-Hugo (History of the quarry.)