Foundations of Chemistry, volume 9, issue 2, July, 2007.


Editorial 26
Special issue on Mendeleev and the periodic system

Author
Eric R. Scerri

The chemical ‘Knight’s Move’ relationship: what is its significance?

Authors
Geoff Rayner-Canham and Megan Oldford

Where to put hydrogen in a periodic table?

Author
Michael Laing

Recommended Questions on the Road towards a Scientific Explanation of
the Periodic System of Chemical Elements with the Help of the
Concepts of Quantum Physics

Author
W. H. Eugen Schwarz

Mathematical Aspects of the Periodic Law

Authors
Guillermo Restrepo and Leonardo Pachón

Book Review of,
Eric R. Scerri, The Periodic Table: its Story and its Significance
Oxford University Press, 2007, xxii + 346 pp, ISBN: 0-19-530573-6



Author
G. W. Rayner-Canham


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(issue 3 will comprise of the second part of this special issue on
Mendeleev and the periodic table.)


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The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance, by Eric Scerri,
Oxford University Press, 2007.


Reviews
"Eric Scerri is something of a rara avis. Scerri's philosophical
orientation enriches the text by raising a number of thought-
provoking issues...The book under review here is clearly and engaging
written and meticulously researched with 42 pages of notes."--
Journal of Chemical Education

"The quality is not merely skin deep, there is a real scholarship
inside...I would have been proud to have written this book rather
than just contributing one image."-- Education in Chemistry

''This is undoublty a book that every practising chemist and
chemistry educator should read because of it's far-reaching
implications for understanding the nature of the periodic law and the
challenges it presents to contemporary portrayals of the Periodic
Table."-- Newsletter of International History, Philosophy and Science
Teaching Group

"The Perodic Table:Its Story and its Significance should be of great
interest and value to chemists and particularly to those chemists who
teach about what makes up us, our world, and our science."-- Journal
of Chemical Education

"Resembling a surreal checkerboard, the periodic table of elements
has acquired a mythic significance in our time, as Ptolemy's spheres
did in the Middle Ages. Yet the table did not fall from the sky. It
has a very terrestrial history a complex and fascinating one. A
century after the death of Mendeleev, the Russian with whom the
periodic table is most famously associated, Scerri relates that
history in his clear and absorbing account. Especially intriguing are
his ruminations on a quasi-philosophical question, which is grist for
the mills of reductionists and anti-reductionists alike: Can
chemistry be reduced to quantum physics?."--San Fransico Chronicle

"It is an extermely rare occurrence to have the privilege of
reviewing a book that is truly the definitive work in its field: The
Periodic Table by Scerri is such a book."-- Rayner Canham

"The Periodic Table is one of the most iconic symbols in our culture.
Every person interested in the physical world in which we live will
want to read this book. It is also a masterful history of the people
involved in the establishment of the periodic law of chemistry. The
gradual growth in awareness of the regularities of the elements is
the main theme of this work. It is already a classic in its first
year in print! " ---Gary Patterson, Carnegie Mellon University.
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