The periodic table of the elements is probably the most universally recognized icon of chemistry. It hangs on the walls of virtually every chemistry lecture room and laboratory in the world, and it appears in the great majority of chemistry textbooks. It is a succinct summary of our discipline. Therefore, it is appropriate that we occasionally reflect on its origins, strengths, and limitations. That is the aim of this book.

What we have here is a collection of 13 papers presented at a conference bearing the same name and held in July 2003 near Banff, Alberta, Canada. Somewhat surprisingly, this particular conference appears to have been the first international meeting on the topic since 1969, when a conference in Vatican City commemorated the centenary of Mendeleev’s version of the table. The Canadian conference was held in honor of the late mathematical chemist, Harry Wiener, and supported by members of his family. The authors, all experts in their respective fields, are from seven different countries.

The collection is unusual and eclectic. To some extent, the papers are review articles, although there are certainly original individual contributions. Among the topics covered are the discovery and development of the periodic law and the table that embodies it, alternative arrangements, periodic patterns, specific families (the lanthanides and the “superactinides”), the relationship of relativistic effects and quantum physics to elementary periodicity, and efforts to create periodic tables for subatomic particles and benzenoid hydrocarbons.

Three of the chapters are exclusively historical, two more place considerable emphasis on the historical record, and all the rest provide some historical background and context. But this is not primarily a work of historical scholarship as is, for example, van Spronsen’s monograph, The Periodic System of Chemical Elements: A History of the First Hundred Years (1). In fact, there seems to be some uncertainty about the purpose of this book. There is a good deal of redundancy, especially in the first four chapters, and little cross-reference between and among the papers. Neither is there a general index. In short, there is little evidence of careful editing that would have shortened the volume and increased its utility. To be sure, there are some common themes, for example Eric Scerri’s advocacy of a periodic table based on the primacy of n + l as a determinant of periodicity and Valentin Ostrovsky’s arguments that quantum physics supports this arrangement. But such connections are not capitalized upon. This is simply a collection of papers.

Because of the general lack of focus and coherence, what this reviewer took from this book was a pile of information bits—some quite fascinating but hardly in an ordered system such as that represented by the periodic table. For example, I learned that only 4% of the matter in the universe is the “ordinary matter” that so intrigues chemists and that 99% of that is hydrogen and helium. So the elements we worry about classifying represent only 0.04% of existing stuff. I knew that following the discovery of argon, Mendeleev speculated that the ether was composed of an undiscovered noble gas, but I didn’t know he predicted its atomic weight was 1 × 10–6 or that he proposed to call it newtonium. Paul Karol’s nine-page first-hand account of the “soap opera that emerged from competitive scientists and intrusive committees” over the naming of the transfermium elements is wonderfully juicy. For example, did you know that the proposal to call element 106 seaborgium was not the first proposal to name an element after a living person? Karol and the Oxford English Dictionary suggest that Emil le Coq de Boisbaudran named gallium after himself, not France. In any case, it was a pun of multiple meaning.

According to Krishnan Balasubramanian, the yellow color of gold and the liquid state of mercury are attributable to relativistic effects. Maurice Kibler’s efforts to classify subatomic particles in a sort of periodic table and Jerry Dias’s attempt to do the same for benzenoid hydrocarbons both struck me as quixotic. But Kibler draws an interesting parallel between what he calls the eka-process in chemistry and physics. Thus, Pauli’s prediction of the neutrino is comparable to Mendeleev’s predictions of the properties of eka-boron, eka-silicon, and eka-aluminum. One more example should suffice: Scerri’s distinction (based on Mendeleev) between “an element as a separate homogeneous substance [e.g., the liquid metal we call mercury] and as a material but invisible part of a compound [e.g., mercury in HgO].” In Mendeleev’s view, his system classified elements in the latter sense. The distinction may seem trivial, but it is not. Certainly, I get depressed when I hear of someone “taking lithium for depression”.

I’m not sure whether the acquisition of this information (and other bits and pieces) repaid the time I spent reading this book. Just about every chemist will find something of interest in this collection, but the yield is relatively low. Perhaps the most important lessons this book can teach readers of this Journal have to do, appropriately enough, with pedagogy. The periodic classification of the elements emerged primarily from the efforts of Mendeleev and Lothar Meyer to organize their textbooks. Though not perfect, the table continues to be a powerful guide as we attempt to communicate our endlessly fascinating science. But we have a responsibility to use it accurately and honestly.