| Lanthanide Holmium was discovered by Swiss chemist Jacques-Louis Soret in 1878 - 1879 who, while he was working on erbia earth, noticed the aberrant spectrographic absorption bands of the then-unknown element and called it "Element X". In 1879 Swedish chemist Cleve extracted Soret's new substance, orange-coloured, which turned out to be "Element X" salts. Cleve had not added anything new about the element. However he named the holmia (after the Latin name for Cleve's home town, Stockholm). |
| Lanthanide Holmium crustal abundance is 1.3x10-4 mass %, in sea water 2.2x10-7 mg/L. As other rare earth elements it is contained in many minerals, including gadolinite, monazite, bastnasite, euxenite and apatite. |
| Holmium is reduced from HoF3 by calcium |