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Can quantum ideas explain chemistry’s greatest icon?

Simplistic assumptions about the periodic table lead us astray, warns Eric Scerri.
  1. Eric Scerri

    1. Eric Scerri is a historian and philosopher of chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA.

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Illustration by Señor Salme

Such has been the scientific and cultural impact of Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of the elements that many people assume it is essentially complete. In its 150th year, can researchers simply raise a toast to the table’s many dividends, and occasionally incorporate another heavy synthetic element?

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Nature 565, 557-559 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00286-8

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