 Ytterbium was discovered by the Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac in the year 1878 . While examining samples of gadolinite , Marignac found a new component in the earth then known as erbia , and he named it ytterbia , for Ytterby , the Swedish village near where he found the new component of erbium . Marignac suspected that ytterbia was a compound of a new element that he called " ytterbium " . 
