Short answers, pulled from the story.
French chemist Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran identified dysprosium in Paris in 1886 while working with holmium oxide. He required more than 30 attempts at his isolation procedure before succeeding, and named the element from the Greek dysprositos, meaning "hard to get."
Dysprosium is added to neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets to raise their coercivity, which is their resistance to demagnetization under heat and stress. Up to 6% of the neodymium in these magnets can be replaced by dysprosium, requiring up to 100 grams per electric car produced, making it critical for drive motors.
About 3,100 tonnes of dysprosium were produced worldwide in 2021. China accounted for 40% of production, Myanmar for 31%, and Australia for 20%. Most dysprosium today comes from ion-adsorption clay ores in southern China.
Dysprosium and holmium share the highest magnetic strengths of all elements, especially at low temperatures. Dysprosium is the most magnetic fermionic element and is nearly tied with terbium for the most magnetic bosonic atom. Below its Curie temperature of 90.5 K it exhibits ferromagnetic ordering, then transitions to a helical antiferromagnetic state before becoming paramagnetic at 179 K.
Dysprosium was not isolated in relatively pure form until after Frank Spedding developed ion-exchange techniques at Iowa State University in the early 1950s, more than six decades after its initial identification in 1886.
Dysprosium's high thermal neutron absorption cross-section makes it suitable for neutron-absorbing control rods in nuclear reactors. Dysprosium-oxide-nickel cermets are used in these rods to regulate fission chain reactions.