Origins Institute Public Lecture with Dr. Eric R. Scerri

Presented on: Tuesday, February 28th at 7:30 PM EST

Origins Institute



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Join the next Origins Institute Public Lecture as we welcome Dr. Eric R. Scerri from the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) who will give a talk entitled, A brief philosophical history of the periodic table

Dr. Scerri will begin with a brief history of the origins of the periodic table, starting with the contributions of Dalton, Döbereiner and others. He 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.

He 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 + l 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.

About the speaker:

Eric Scerri received all his degrees in the UK before going to the US in 1995 as a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology.  He has been a lecturer at UCLA for the past 22 years, where he teaches general chemistry, as well as courses in History and Philosophy of Science.  

Scerri is one of the founders of the study of the philosophy of chemistry and the founding editor of the Springer journal Foundations of Chemistry, currently celebrating its 25th year of publication.  Eric is also the author of several books with Oxford University Press including The Periodic Table, Its Story and Its Significance which is now approaching 1000 journal citations.                  

He is also the author of A Very Short Introduction to the Periodic Table (2011) A Tale of Seven Elements (2013) and A Tale of Seven Scientists and A New Philosophy of Science (2016) as well as the editor of several collections of articles on the philosophy of chemistry.  His website is at ericscerri.com


The views expressed by presenters are their own and their appearance in a program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by McMaster University.