Short answers, pulled from the story.
Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac discovered ytterbium in 1878 while examining samples of gadolinite in Geneva. He named the element after Ytterby, a Swedish village near where he originally found the erbium source.
French chemist Georges Urbain separated Marignac's ytterbia into two components including neoytterbia and lutecia in 1907. The Commission on Atomic Mass granted priority to Urbain in 1909 and adopted his names as official ones.
Ytterbium exists as three distinct crystal structures labeled alpha beta and gamma with transformation temperatures at minus thirteen degrees Celsius and seven hundred ninety-five degrees Celsius. The element has a melting point of eight hundred twenty-four degrees Celsius and a boiling point of one thousand one hundred ninety-six degrees Celsius creating the smallest liquid range of all metals.
Natural ytterbium consists of seven stable isotopes including one six eight Yb through one seven six Yb with one seven four Yb being the most abundant at thirty-one point nine zero percent natural abundance. Thirty-two synthetic radioisotopes have been observed with the most stable being one six nine Yb having a half-life of thirty-two point zero one four days.
In 2013 experimental atomic clocks using ytterbium atoms set a record for stability at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Physicists reported these clocks tick within less than two parts in one quintillion roughly ten times better than previous best results for other atomic clock types.