To see accurate pricing, please choose your delivery country.
 
 
United States
£ GBP
All Shops

British Wildlife

8 issues per year 84 pages per issue Subscription only

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Subscriptions from £33 per year

Conservation Land Management

4 issues per year 44 pages per issue Subscription only

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

Subscriptions from £26 per year
Academic & Professional Books  Reference  Physical Sciences  Chemistry

The Lost Elements The Periodic Table's Shadow Side

Popular Science
By: Marco Fontani(Author), Mariagrazia Costa(Author), Mary Virginia Orna(Author)
531 pages, 55 b/w photos and b/w illustrations, tables
The Lost Elements
Click to have a closer look
  • The Lost Elements ISBN: 9780199383344 Hardback Nov 2014 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £43.49
    #213792
Price: £43.49
About this book Contents Customer reviews Biography Related titles

About this book

In the mid-nineteenth century, chemists came to the conclusion that elements should be organized by their atomic weights. However, the atomic weights of various elements were calculated erroneously, and chemists also observed some anomalies in the properties of other elements. Over time, it became clear that the periodic table as currently comprised contained gaps, missing elements that had yet to be discovered. A rush to discover these missing pieces followed, and a seemingly endless amount of elemental discoveries were proclaimed and brought into laboratories. It wasn't until the discovery of the atomic number in 1913 that chemists were able to begin making sense of what did and what did not belong on the periodic table, but even then, the discovery of radioactivity convoluted the definition of an element further. Throughout its formation, the periodic table has seen false entries, good-faith errors, retractions, and dead ends; in fact, there have been more elemental "discoveries" that have proven false than there are current elements on the table.

The Lost Elements: The Periodic Table's Shadow Side collects the most notable of these instances, stretching from the nineteenth century to the present. The Lost Elements: The Periodic Table's Shadow Side tells the story of how scientists have come to understand elements, by discussing the failed theories and false discoveries that shaped the path of scientific progress. Chapters range from early chemists' stubborn refusal to disregard alchemy as legitimate practice, to the effects of the atomic number on discovery, to the switch in influence from chemists to physicists, as elements began to be artificially created in the twentieth century. Along the way, Fontani, Costa, and Orna introduce us to the key figures in the development of the periodic table as we know it. And we learn, in the end, that this development was shaped by errors and gaffs as much as by correct assumptions and scientific conclusions.

Contents

Part I. Before 1789: Early Errors and Early Elements
Part II. 1789-1869: From Lavoisier to Mendeleev: The First Errors at the Dawn of Concept
Part III. 1869-1914: From the Periodic Table to Moseley's Revolution: Rips and Tears in Medeleev's Net
Part IV. 1914-1939: From Nuclear Classification to the First Accelerators: Chemists' Paradise Lost...(and Physicists' Paradise Regained)
Part V. 1939 to the Present. Beyond Uranium, to the Stars
Part VI. No Place for Them in the Periodic Table: Bizarre Elements
Part VII. Modern Alchemy: The Dream to Transmute the Elements Has Always Been with Us

Customer Reviews

Biography

Marco Fontani and Mariagrazia Costa both are affiliated with the Department of Chemistry at the University of Florence. Mary Virginia Orna is affiliated with the Department of Chemistry at the College of New Rochelle.

Popular Science
By: Marco Fontani(Author), Mariagrazia Costa(Author), Mary Virginia Orna(Author)
531 pages, 55 b/w photos and b/w illustrations, tables
Media reviews

"Recommended. All academic, general, and professional history of chemistry collections."
CHOICE

"Rarely has so much been written so authoritatively about things that do not exist. In their marvellous The Lost Elements, chemists Marco Fontani, Mariagrazia Costa and Mary Virginia Orna detail the discovery of dozens of elements that turned out not to be [...] staggeringly comprehensive, well researched book"
– Theodore Gray, Nature

"Thank goodness these stories have been brought back to life."
– Peter Wothers, Times Higher Education Supplement

"This reasonably-priced book has excellent indexes of discoverers' names, the lost elements (preceded by a chronological list of these) and general subjects. The literature coverage is heroic, with 1500 up-to-date references, often from obscure journals."
Chemistry World

"The Lost Elements: The Periodic Table's Shadow Side is a book to be savored, read and reread, because it reveals the real history of chemistry in the form of adventure stories."
– Jeffrey Kovac, Journal of Chemical Education

Current promotions
New and Forthcoming BooksNHBS Moth TrapBritish Wildlife MagazineBuyers Guides