Overview

Gadolinium was separated in 1880 by the Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac and characterised by Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who named it after the mineral gadolinite. That mineral had been named in honour of Johan Gadolin, the Finnish chemist who had begun the study of the rare earths at Ytterby. Gadolinium is a silvery rare-earth metal with remarkable magnetic properties and a strong appetite for neutrons, used as a contrast agent in magnetic resonance imaging and in nuclear reactor shielding. Its many unpaired electrons make gadolinium strongly magnetic and a powerful absorber of neutrons, so that besides brightening soft tissue in MRI scans it serves in reactor control and shielding and in research on magnetic refrigeration.

Gadolinium-based MRI contrast agents, in wide clinical use since the late 1980s, are not risk-free: in patients with severe kidney impairment they have been linked to nephrogenic systemic fibrosis, a serious and sometimes fatal condition, prompting FDA and European warnings from 2006 onward, and subsequent research found that trace gadolinium can be retained in brain and other tissue even in patients with healthy kidneys, a finding that has driven ongoing regulatory review and a shift toward the safest, most stable formulations of the agent.