![]() ![]() ![]() It is a sort of Galapagos Islands of the periodic table, since, Kean notes, “more elements (seven) trace their lineage back to Ytterby than any other person, place, or thing”. Noting that much of what Mendeleev did was logical guesswork, he posited the existence of elements that were junior to known elements before they could be discovered, Kean enjoys the irony that only a few hundred miles from Mendeleev’s lab in St Petersburg was the Swedish island of Ytterby, an area rich in elements called lanthanides or “rare earths”. ![]() It is these stories that make his book so compelling. Kean also recognises it is a “storybook” and that there’s “a funny, or odd, or chilling tale attached to every element” on the table. Although the periodic table of elements has been revised and adapted ever since it was created by a Russian scientist, Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, it remains “one of the great intellectual achievements of humankind”. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |