// MATTER · ELEMENT 67 / 118atoms.no/elements
Ho67
Holmium
Ho·Z 67·Lanthanide·164.9·⭕ 2B · F♯ Major
▸ The reading
interpretive · artHolmium concentrates magnetic flux beyond anything iron can carry — its pole pieces add about three tesla at the focus of narrow-bore research magnets. Otherwise it dopes surgical lasers and stays out of headlines. The quiet specialist consulted only when the problem exceeds every ordinary material.
The science below is cited as science; the symbolic layers are flagged as interactive art.
⚜ Periodic Frequency
2BF♯ Major
a seat struck in brass — testimony, not prediction
the seat has its own room on ⭕ THE OVAL TABLE — tap the code
▸ The lenses
▸ Discovery
Marc Delafontaine + Jacques-Louis Soret (Switzerland) and Per Teodor Cleve (Sweden) — independent · Switzerland / Sweden · 1878
▸ Stellar origin
s-process + r-processSingle stable isotope ¹⁶⁵Ho built across slow and rapid neutron-capture pathways.
▸ Reactivity
Strongest magnetic field response of any elementHo pole pieces added 3.5 T to a hybrid magnet in 1986, reaching 33.6 T across a 2 mm gap — the 48.7 T DC record set in 2025 uses no holmium.
▸ Applications
- Flux-concentrating pole pieces in research electromagnets
- Solid-state laser dopants
- Nuclear-reactor neutron absorbers
- Spectrophotometer wavelength standards
▸ Curiosity
Holmium pole pieces added 3.5 of the 33.6 tesla in a 1986 hybrid magnet — magnetic flux beyond iron's limit; the sustained-field record has since passed 48 tesla without them.
▸ Related readings
a resonance drawn between readings — not a claim that they share an origin.