Yttrium is a chemical element

Chemical element

A chemical element is a pure chemical substance consisting of one type of atom distinguished by its atomic number, which is the number of protons in its nucleus. Familiar examples of elements include carbon, oxygen, aluminum, iron, copper, gold, mercury, and lead.As of November 2011, 118 elements...

 with symbol Y and atomic number

Atomic number

In chemistry and physics, the atomic number is the number of protons found in the nucleus of an atom and therefore identical to the charge number of the nucleus. It is conventionally represented by the symbol Z. The atomic number uniquely identifies a chemical element...

 39. It is a silvery-metallic transition metal

Transition metal

The term transition metal has two possible meanings:*The IUPAC definition states that a transition metal is "an element whose atom has an incomplete d sub-shell, or which can give rise to cations with an incomplete d sub-shell." Group 12 elements are not transition metals in this definition.*Some...

 chemically similar to the lanthanide

Lanthanide

The lanthanide or lanthanoid series comprises the fifteen metallic chemical elements with atomic numbers 57 through 71, from lanthanum through lutetium...

s and it has often been classified as a "rare earth element

Rare earth element

As defined by IUPAC, rare earth elements or rare earth metals are a set of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, specifically the fifteen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium...

". Yttrium is almost always found combined with the lanthanides in rare earth minerals and is never found in nature as a free element. Its only stable isotope

Isotope

Isotopes are variants of atoms of a particular chemical element, which have differing numbers of neutrons. Atoms of a particular element by definition must contain the same number of protons but may have a distinct number of neutrons which differs from atom to atom, without changing the designation...

, ⁸⁹Y, is also its only naturally occurring isotope.

In 1787, Carl Axel Arrhenius

Carl Axel Arrhenius

Lt. Carl Axel Arrhenius was a Swedish chemist. He is most widely known as the discoverer of the element Yttrium.Arrhenius was born in Stockholm. He was interested in mineralogy and chemistry after he met Peter Jacob Hjelm at the Swedish Royal Mint laboratory...

 found a new mineral near Ytterby

Ytterby

Ytterby is a village on the Swedish island of Resarö, in Vaxholm Municipality in the Stockholm archipelago.The name of the village means "outer village", implying that its location is its most noteworthy feature....

 in Sweden and named it ytterbite

Gadolinite

Gadolinite, sometimes also known as Ytterbite, is a silicate mineral which consists principally of the silicates of cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, yttrium, beryllium, and iron with the formula 2FeBe2Si2O10...

, after the village.