Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews
The Periodic Table:
Its Story and Its Significance
by Eric R. Scerri
Oxford University Press: New York, 2007. 346 pp.
ISBN 0195305736 (cloth). $35
reviewed by A. Truman Schwartz
Eric Scerri is something of a rara avis. He appears to be
well informed about descriptive inorganic chemistry and
quantum mechanics, he exhibits considerable knowledge con-
cerning the history of chemistry, and he is one of the most
prolific practitioners of the new field of philosophy of chem-
istry. His interest and experience are evident in this admi-
rable study of the icon that encapsulates chemistry—the
periodic table.
After a brief introduction, Scerri provides (in Chapter
1) an overview of the periodic system and the book. Chap-
ters 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 recep-
tion of his system and table. Much of this material has al-
ready 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 pe-
riodic 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 rais-
ing a number of thought-provoking issues. For example, he
argues that the development of the periodic table is an evo-
lution 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 peri-
odic 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 con-
tributions. The triumph of Mendeleev’s system is often at-
tributed 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.
598 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 84 No. 4 April 2007
Mendeleev made a distinction between elements as com-
mon “simple substances” such as the liquid metal we call
mercury and more abstract metaphysical entities that some-
how retain their identities in chemical reactions. The peri-
odic 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 spe-
cific chemical meaning of “basic” introduces possible confu-
sion. “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 mathemati-
cal theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemis-
try 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 unre-
alized.
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 ver-
sions and reproduces many of them. Scerri grants that vari-
ous versions of the table emphasize different aspects of
periodicity and serve different pedagogical purposes. How-
ever, 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 sepa-
rate bibliography. The work is nicely illustrated with photo-
graphs, 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,
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edited by
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University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-1600

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 chemi-
cal bonding as the two big ideas in chemistry. It is equally
instructive that we cannot offer definitive and complete ex-
planations of either subject. So we continue to tell our stu-
dents 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.
A. Truman Schwartz is an emeritus member of the De-
partment of Chemistry, Macalester College, Saint Paul, MN
55105; schwartz@macalester.edu.

www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 84 No. 4 April 2007 • Journal of Chemical Education 599