New State of Metal.
4 Important Rare Earth Elements. Sir William Crookes, a 19th century British chemist, once wrote that, "rare earth elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations and haunt us in our very dreams.
" These weren't easy elements to isolate or to understand, and so there was a very long lag time between the discovery of the rare earths, and the discovery of practical uses for them. It didn't help that individual rare earth elements don't occur by their lonesome—they travel in packs. To get one, you have to mine all of them.
Wine on Superconductors.