On Friday, Sept 7th, Eric Scerri will be speaking about and signing
copies
of his book on the PERIODIC TABLE

at the Oxford University Press Book Shop in Oxford, (116 High
Street), at 5.45 pm.

Everybody welcome.
Please feel free to forward this message to any interested parties.


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

Reviews

Eric Scerri's new book is a most appropriate work to mark the
centenary of the death of Dimitri Mendeleev. The title—The Periodic
Table: Its Story and Its Significance—gives a fair idea of the book's
contents, and the author's approach and perspective are captured by
his statement that he is concentrating on "the fundamental scientific
and philosophical ideas that underpinned the evolution of the
system." This, then, is a book about scientific ideas. Scerri does
provide brief biographical sketches of each of his scientific
protagonists, but biographical, social and cultural context rarely
intrude into the narrative. American Scientist.

"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 difinitiev 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 D. Patterson (Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA) -
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