Friedrich Wöhler
In 1787, Carl Axel Arrhenius found a new mineral near Ytterby in Sweden and named it "ytterbite", after the village. Johan Gadolin discovered yttrium's oxide in Arrhenius' sample in 1789, and Anders Gustaf Ekeberg named the new oxide "yttria". Elemental yttrium was first isolated in 1828 by Friedrich Wöhler.