Per Teodor Cleve

Per Teodor Cleve (1840 to 1905) was a Swedish chemist, biologist, mineralogist and oceanographer born in Stockholm, who is best known for discovering the elements holmium and thulium in 1879. He took his degrees at Uppsala University in 1863 and 1868, taught at the Royal Institute of Technology and held the chair of chemistry at Uppsala from 1874. He suggested in 1874 that didymium was two elements, a view confirmed in 1885, and showed that the newly found scandium was the element Mendeleev had predicted. From 1890 he turned to biology, dating late glacial deposits from diatom fossils, and he presided over the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.