Review of A Tale of Seven Elements

Per the author’s introduction, the periodic table, always afavorite among chemists (including this reviewer and the Book and Media Reviews editor), currently has a heightened awareness in the public eye. “Alternative ” periodic tables abound. In addition to books aimed at scientists,1−4 at least two books on the periodic table and the elements aimed at general audiences have recently been published.5−7 In A Tale of Seven Elements, Scerri expands his coverage of elements in his previous book1 to cover seven “missing elements”. These elements are the “infra-uranium ” elements (as opposed to transuranium elements), the last to be discovered among the first 92 elements. The introduction covers a wealth of topics, including disputes on scientific priority, both scientific and sociological, answering the question of what constitutes priority of elemental discovery, and how these concepts pertain to these seve