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A tale of two tables

Nature Chemistry volume 11, pages 757–759 (2019)Cite this article

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M. Pilar Gil and Eli Zysman-Colman look back at the history of two periodic tables that date from the late nineteenth century.

On page 82 of Bolton’s work, there is an entry for a periodic table wall chart that bears the same title and the same place of publication as the table found in St Andrews: “Wandtafel der periodischen Gesetzmassigkeit der Elemente nach Mendelejeff. Wien, 1885.” A similar entry appears in another compendium4, Carl Georg and Leopold Ost’s 1889 Sclagwort-Katalog, which lists books and maps published in Germany from 1883–1887. The citation reads: “Wandtafel der periodischen Gesetzmässigkeit d. Elemente nach Mendelejeff. Wien 85. Helf’s Sort. 2 –”. To the best of our knowledge, these are the only two citations corresponding to a periodic table that appear in both compendiums, suggesting that these are indeed referring to the first ever published periodic table wallcharts. It should be noted that a painted periodic table (and hence not a commercial product) linked to Mendeleev — and ostensibly dating back to 1876 — exists in the chemistry building of St Petersburg State University, Russia5.

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Fig. 1: The St Andrews periodic table.
Fig. 2: The periodic table found in Koblenz.

References

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to extend a very special thanks to J. Klug for his detailed comments on the discovery of the Koblenz table and to A. Aitken, the discoverer of the St Andrews table. We are grateful to S. Alvarez and to D. Cole-Hamilton for their comments on the early versions of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, UK

    M. Pilar Gil

  2. Organic Semiconductor Centre, EaStCHEM School of Chemistry, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, UK

    Eli Zysman-Colman

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  1. M. Pilar Gil
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Correspondence to M. Pilar Gil or Eli Zysman-Colman.

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Gil, M.P., Zysman-Colman, E. A tale of two tables. Nat. Chem. 11, 757–759 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-019-0310-1

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