About Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran
Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, also called François Lecoq de Boisbaudran, was a self-taught French chemist known for his discoveries of the chemical elements gallium, samarium and dysprosium. He developed methods for separation and purification of the rare earth elements and was one of the pioneers of the science of spectroscopy. Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovered samarium in 1879 after first isolating samarium oxide. Using this apparatus, he discovered the lanthanides samarium (1880), dysprosium (1886) and europium (1890). In 1885, he also spectroscopically characterized gadolinium in 1885, an element previously discovered in 1880 by J. This contribution occurred when he proposed that the newly discovered element argon was a member of a new, previously unrecognized, chemical series of elements that came to be known as the noble gases.
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