The Bakerian Lecture. - On radiant matter spectroscopy: the detection and wide distribution of Yttrium. In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. For the year MDCCCLXXXIII, Vol. 174.

London:: Harrison and Sons, 1883., 1883. 304 x 242 mm. 4to. Pages 891-918. [Entire volume: iv, [8], (1)-271, [1 blank]; iv, [2], 459-549, [1 blank], 583-638, 645, 691, [1 blank]; 717-721, [1 blank], 817-863, [1 blank], 891-988 pp.] 1 fig., tables. Early green cloth (ca. 1909), printed paper spine label; lightly rubbed. Ex library bookplate of the Plainfield Public Library, Plainfield, New Jersey, rubber stamps on edges. Very good. Beginning in the 1880s, Crookes occupied himself with the examination of the phosphorescent spectra produced by bombarding minerals with radiant matter, an effort which led him to speculate on the origin of the elements. Most substances gave continuous phosphorescent spectra, but the beautiful discontinuous spectra produced by rare earth minerals led him to suspect in 1881 that these ores contained many unknown elements. Crookes found that yttria could be separated by fractionation into five or more parts that were differentiated only by their slightly different solubilities in ammonia and by the different prominent lines in their phosphorescent spectra. It turned out later that Crookes had been totally misled by impurities in his samples. DNB, 1912-1921, pp. 136-137; DSB, III, pp. 474-482.