Who discovered the chemical element europium?

Eugène-Anatole Demarçay (Paris, France, January 1, 1852 – Paris, March 5, 1903) was a French chemist who designed an apparatus to produce a spark using an induction coil and used it to generate the spectra of rare earth elements which he examined using spectroscopy.

In 1901, he was studying samarium, a new element that had been discovered over twenty years earlier. In his studies, he made an interesting discovery: the new element was not one, but two elements. He gave the original name of samarium to one, and the other he called europium, after the continent of Europe.

Europium is a chemical element with the symbol Eu and atomic number 63. It's a rare-earth metal of the lanthanide series of the periodic table. It's the least dense, the softest, and the most volatile member of the lanthanide series.

There are no commercial applications for europium metal, although it has been used to dope some types of plastics to make lasers, in television tubes and lasers. Since it is a good absorber of neutrons, it's being studied for use in nuclear reactors.

It has a bright, shiny surface. It's steel gray and has a melting point of 1,520°F (826°C) and a boiling point of about 2,712°F (1,489°C).

It's not abundant in the Earth's surface. It is thought to occur at a concentration of no more than about one part per million. That makes it one of the least abundant of the rare earth elements. The most common ores of europium are monazite, bastnasite, and gadolinite.