The periodic table
When Dimitri Mendeleev published the first periodic table 150 years ago, only about half as many elements were known as today. Over the ensuing decades, researchers have added new names to the chart, first by isolating elements in nature and then by smashing atomic nuclei together to create artificial ones, some of which exist for just fractions of a second. In celebration of Mendeleev’s achievement and the International Year of the Periodic Table, this special issue of Nature examines the past, present and future of the iconic chart.
Content
Extreme chemistry: experiments at the edge of the periodic table
As the chase for new elements slows, scientists focus on deepening their understanding of the superheavy ones they already know.
- Philip Ball
Can quantum ideas explain chemistry’s greatest icon?
Simplistic assumptions about the periodic table lead us astray, warns Eric Scerri.
- Eric Scerri
Celebrate the women behind the periodic table
Brigitte Van Tiggelen and Annette Lykknes spotlight female researchers who discovered elements and their properties.
- Brigitte Van Tiggelen &
- Annette Lykknes
More than 2,000 years of elements: a prehistory of the periodic table
Jennifer Rampling traces how ideas of material essence and indivisibility evolved in the centuries before modern atomic theory.
- Jennifer Rampling
In his element: looking back on Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table
Tim Radford celebrates an extraordinary short-story collection.
- Tim Radford
When Mendeleev proposed his periodic table in 1869, element 43 was unknown. In 1937, it became the first element to be discovered by synthesis in a laboratory — paving the way to the atomic age.
- Kit Chapman
Anniversary celebrations are due for Mendeleev’s periodic table
The iconic arrangement of elements assembled 150 years ago is about the future of chemistry as well as its past.
The changing face of the chemical world.
- J. D. Trye
Источник: nature.com
