In Your Element in 2012

Daniel Rabinovich outlines the history, properties and uses of aluminium — one of the most versatile, pervasive and inexpensive metals today, yet it was considered a rare and costly element only 150 years ago.

For historical reasons, plutonium brings to mind nuclear weapons. Jan Hartmann brings another side of element 94 to attention, which features an upcoming trip to its eponymous celestial body.

Gregory Girolami recounts how element 76 beat a close competitor to the title of densest known metal and went on to participate in Nobel Prize-winning reactions.

Catherine Renouf describes how indium went from being a rather inconspicuous element to one whose role as a component of high-technology devices and gadgets may deplete its worldwide resources.

You would be forgiven if you thought the most important element in an organic transformation was carbon. Matthew Hartings argues that, for just over half a century in many of chemistry's most renowned organic reactions, it has actually been palladium.

Although first known among chemists for its noxious or lifeless character, nitrogen was later revealed to be involved in many life, and death, processes. Michael Tarselli ponders on this unforeseen characteristic.

Richard Wilson relates how the rare, highly radioactive, highly toxic element protactinium puzzled chemists for a long time, and was discovered and named twice from two different isotopes before finding its place in fundamental research.

Many chemical elements behave quite differently depending on the compound they are found in, but Matt Rattley argues that bromine does so in a particularly striking manner.

Simon H. Friedman explores the various ways in which carbon is inherently tied to our lives — beyond its elegant, treasured role in organic chemistry.

Copper, routinely encountered in daily life, may at first glance seem a little unexciting. Tiberiu G. Moga relates how science, however, has not overlooked its promise.

Dan O'Leary examines Harold Urey's decision to name the mass-2 hydrogen isotope 'deuterium'.

Owing to peculiar properties, helium has taken both the main and supporting roles in scientific discoveries over the years. Christine Herman explores just what makes it such a cool element.