Every field of science has its favorite anniversary. For physics, it’s Newton’s Principia of 1687, the book that introduced the laws of motion and gravity. Biology celebrates Darwin’s On the Origin of ...

A century and a half ago, a Russian chemistry professor published a classification of all the known elements, organized by atomic weight. Today, the system that he created for his students — plus some ...

The story of the fifteenth element began in Hamburg, in 1669. The unsuccessful glassblower and alchemist Hennig Brandt was trying to find the philosopher’s stone, a mythical substance that could turn ...

The rare radioactive substance made its way from the United States to Russia on a commercial flight in June 2009. Customs officers balked at accepting the package, which was ensconced in lead ...

“LA république n’a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes.” With that curt dismissal a court in revolutionary France cut short the life of Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, argued by some to be the ...

The periodic table has become an icon of science. Its rows and columns provide a tidy way of showcasing the elements — the ingredients that make up the universe. It seems obvious today, but it wasn’t ...

Since the invention of the periodic table 150 years ago this month, scientists have worked to fill in the rows of elements and make sense of their properties. But researchers have also pursued a ...

The periodic table of chemical elements hangs in front of chemistry classrooms worldwide and is an icon for science. Yet much was unknown about its history -- until now. The periodic table reflects ...

Four new elements are about to be added to the periodic table: nihonium (Nh, element 113), moscovium (Mc, element 115), tennessine (Ts, element 117), and oganesson (Og, element 118). When you say “new ...

Since element 99 -- einsteinium -- was discovered in 1952 from the debris of the first hydrogen bomb, scientists have performed very few experiments with it because it is so hard to create and is ...