the next on-line seminar of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will be given by Professor Eric Scerri (UCLA) who will present
A Brief Philosophical History of the Periodic Table
This will be live on Thursday, 19 January 2023, beginning at 5.00pm GMT (6.00pm CET, 12noon ET, 9.00am PT). The format will be a talk of 20-30 minutes, followed by a moderated discussion of half an hour.
As with recent seminars the Zoom link can be freely accessed by anyone, member of SHAC or not, via the following Eventbrite link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/shac-online-seminar-professor-eric-scerri-tickets-499088044777
Alternatively, the seminar can be accessed live on YouTube at https://youtu.be/Fjln_vAqvSQ
Most previous on-line seminars can be found on the SHAC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/SocietyforHistoryofAlchemyandChemistry
A Brief Philosophical History of the Periodic Table
Eric Scerri
My talk will begin with a brief history of the origins of the periodic table, starting with the contributions of Dalton, Döbereiner and others. I will proceed to the independent discovery of the periodic table by as many as six individuals, culminating with Mendeleev’s table just over 150 years ago. The emphasis will be on philosophical aspects of these developments such as the debate concerning the relative merits of predictions and accommodations.
I will discuss the challenges that the periodic table faced, such as the existence of pair reversals and the discovery of the noble gases. Next came several discoveries in physics, including X-rays, radioactivity and the electron, all of which had a profound effect on the understanding of the periodic table. Research in atomic structure beginning at the turn of the 20th century prompted some physicists such as J.J. Thomson and Niels Bohr to begin to seek a fundamental explanation for the periodic table in terms of electronic structure.
The later developed quantum mechanics of Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Pauli and others led to a more rigorous explanation, although some open questions remain up to present times. For example, there is yet no fundamental explanation for the empirical rule that the occupation of atomic orbitals proceeds via the simple n + 1 rule.
In addition, relativistic effects are being increasingly considered in attempts to understand the heavier elements in particular. Finally, several other remaining open questions will be mentioned, such as the membership of group 3 of the periodic table, alternative representations such as the 32-column format, the left-step periodic table and whether there may exist an ‘optimal form’ of the periodic table.