After a brief introduction, Scerri provides (in Chapter 1) an overview of the periodic system and the book. Chapters 2 through 5 are primarily historical. They describe early attempts to organize and classify the elements on the basis of their chemical properties, the co-discovery of the periodic law, the special contributions of D. I. Mendeleev and the reception of his system and table. Much of this material has already been addressed by van Spronsen (1), but in the last half of this book Scerri goes well beyond the Dutch author’s classic work. Chapter 6 discusses the impact of discoveries such as radioactivity, atomic number, and isotopy on the periodic table; and Chapters 7, 8, and 9 introduce electrons, electronic configuration, and quantum mechanics. The final chapter is a bit of a grab bag, with sections on astrophysics, nucleosynthesis, periodic trends, and complicating details such as diagonal effects, secondary periodicity, the knight’s move relationship, and first member anomalies.

Scerri’s philosophical orientation enriches the text by raising a number of thought-provoking issues. For example, he argues that the development of the periodic table is an evolution of scientific ideas, not a scientific revolution in the Kuhnian sense. To be sure, Mendeleev deserves his well-established place as “the undisputed champion of the periodic system”, but he was undoubtedly influenced by the work of others. Scerri credits De Chancourtois, Newlands, Odling, Hinrichs, and Lothar Meyer as having made significant contributions. The triumph of Mendeleev’s system is often attributed to his accurate predictions of the properties of three undiscovered elements—scandium, gallium, and germanium. But Scerri points out that an equal number of the great Russian’s predictions proved to be wrong. He uses this to help support the thesis that the accommodation of known and subsequently new facts was more important than prediction in the acceptance of the periodic law.

Mendeleev made a distinction between elements as common “simple substances” such as the liquid metal we call mercury and more abstract metaphysical entities that somehow retain their identities in chemical reactions. The periodic classification was originally based on the latter concept, not the former. Scerri’s argument that this distinction is still a useful one convinced this reviewer. However, I wish he did not refer to abstract elements as “basic substances”. The specific chemical meaning of “basic” introduces possible confusion. “Fundamental” or “essential” would be more appropriate modifiers.

In this book, and some of his other writings, Scerri is much concerned with whether chemistry can be reduced to physics. In 1929, the theoretical physicist Paul Dirac famously declared: “ The underlying laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known.” The only difficulty seems to be in applying the laws and doing the math. Scerri regards the periodic table as “a test case for the adequacy of the new methods developed in quantum chemistry”. While granting the insights to periodicity provided by electron configurations, Scerri points out that the order of shell filling has not been deduced from first principles. Quantum numbers preceded quantum mechanics, the Pauli exclusion principle and Hund’s law are empirically based, and ab initio calculations are still guided by semi-empirical considerations. As someone first attracted to chemistry by sights, smells, and sounds, I would not be disappointed if Dirac’s dream remained forever unrealized.

The book ends with a question that many chemists are inclined to dismiss: “Is there one most fundamental periodic table?” E. Z. Mazurs’s exhaustive study (2) analyzes 700 versions and reproduces many of them. Scerri grants that various versions of the table emphasize different aspects of periodicity and serve different pedagogical purposes. However, he suggests that the left-step or Janet arrangement, based on the n + l sum of quantum numbers, best reflects chemical periodicity. This is the same form advocated by Henry Bent in his recent book (3). I am not entirely convinced, and not just because it makes bedfellows of helium and beryllium. But certainly the left-step version deserves a place at the table.

The book under review here is clearly and engagingly written and meticulously researched with 42 pages of notes. The extensive bibliography is folded into these notes, and the ease of referencing would be enhanced if there were a separate bibliography. The work is nicely illustrated with photographs, tables and graphs of data and various versions of the periodic table. Many are reproduced from original sources. However, I found myself looking for a modern periodic table, conveniently placed in the end papers as is done with most general chemistry textbooks. I noted only two minor errors: the reference on p 48 to figure 2.2 should be to figure 2.3, and the temperature of the big bang is given as 10²³ K in the text and 10³² K in table 10.2.

The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance should be of great interest and value to chemists and particularly to those chemists who teach about the stuff that makes up us, our world, and our science. It is instructive that Scerri, in his introduction, identifies chemical periodicity and chemical bonding as the two big ideas in chemistry. It is equally instructive that we cannot offer definitive and complete explanations of either subject. So we continue to tell our students useful and sometimes contradictory semi-fictions about our big ideas. This book will make our declarations better informed.

Literature Cited

1. Van Spronsen, J. The Periodic System of the Chemical Elements, The First One Hundred Years; Elsevier: Amsterdam, 1996.
2. Mazurs, E. The Graphic Representation of the Periodic System During 100 Years; University of Alabama Press: Tuscaloosa, 1974.
3. Bent, H. A. New Ideas in Chemistry from Fresh Energy for the Periodic Law; Authorhouse: Bloomington, IN, 2006.