Ytterby: The Tiny Swedish Island That Gave the Periodic ...
Jul 16, 2010· Blogging the Periodic Table. Four of the names of these elements come straight from Ytterby—ytterbium, yttrium, terbium, and erbium. The names couldn't get much shorter— rbium doesn't look right—so for the rest, chemists picked holmium, after Stockholm; thulium, after a mythic name for Scandinavia; and gadolinium, after Gadolin himself. Today,...