Solvay's Centre de Recherches in Aubervilliers (CRA), north of Paris, has been one of the leading institutions in rare earths research in the world for the last sixty years. In the 1960s and 1970s, its pioneering studies in liquid–liquid separation of rare earths made it possible to obtain a new level of purity of final products, opening the door to a vast number of applications in fields as varied as phosphors (for colour TV sets and trichromatic lamps) or catalysis (for exhaust emission control). Generations of researchers, many of whom were educated by the leading French figures in solid-state chemistry, worked behind the centre's walls creating a unique critical mass of rare earths in the French industrial chemical community. Today, the place of rare earths has dwindled in the centre's overall structure, but the trajectory still lingers on. This paper follows the complex life of the rare earths research trajectory in the CRA and tries to understand the factors that contributed to its evolution.

索尔维位于巴黎北部 Aubervilliers (CRA) 的研究中心在过去的 60 年里一直是世界稀土研究的领先机构之一。在 1960 年代和 1970 年代，其在稀土液液分离方面的开创性研究使最终产品的纯度达到新的水平成为可能，为荧光粉（用于彩色电视）等各种领域的大量应用打开了大门。套和三基色灯）或催化（用于废气排放控制）。一代又一代的研究人员，其中许多人接受了法国固态化学领域的领军人物的教育，他们在该中心的墙后工作，在法国工业化学界创造了独特的稀土临界质量。今天，稀土在中心整体结构中的地位已经下降，但轨迹仍在继续。本文遵循 CRA 中稀土研究轨迹的复杂生命，并试图了解促成其演变的因素。