'The Fundamental Truth of His Periodic Law”

My middle son is given to serial enthusiasms, what others call hobbies. He’s a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, now in training at Quantico, and spends his weekends rock climbing in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. This lends a pleasing symmetry to his life, as one of his longest, most intense obsessions as a boy was rock collecting. His collection is stored in a wooden cabinet in our garage. Rocks were followed by coins, carnivorous plants, the trombone, computers (he built his first at age eleven) and etymology, a pastime still thriving (we killed fifteen minutes last week talking about the word venery). 

Michael’s enthusiasm I recall most fondly was his effort, around age ten, to redesign the periodic table of elements. He respected Dmitri Mendeleev, the Russian chemist who designed the original, but thought he could do better. I remember stacks of notebook paper covered with the familiar, variously colored boxes but arranged in unexpected shapes. I still have some of them. If I had to propose a common theme among Michael’s revised periodic tables and other interests, I would call them efforts to organize the world for human understanding. I think of him as a sort of amateur Linnaeus with interests beyond biology.

 

To celebrate the International Year of the Periodic Table in 2019 (the 150^th anniversary of Mendeleev’s creation), the American Chemical Society’s journal C&EN reprinted an article the late Dr. Oliver Sacks had published with them in 2003: “An Essay on Gallium,” which begins: “I don’t really have a favorite element—I love them all. But the first that pops into my mind, at least today, is gallium [Ga, atomic number 31].”

 

I can't say that I love plutonium (Pu, atomic number 94). Elsewhere, Sacks said his favorite element was bromine (Br, atomic number 35). He titled his 2001 memoir Uncle Tungsten [W, atomic number 94]: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. In the gallium article Sacks writes:

 

“Why gallium? Not a common element, not one likely to be lying around the house, but one I was introduced to quite early on, by my Uncle Tungsten (as we used to call my Uncle Dave, who owned a tungsten lightbulb factory).”

 

Sacks gets around to celebrating Mendeleev: “When I came to learn about the periodic table and its history, I was intrigued to learn that gallium was the first element to be predicted by Mendeleyev (he called it ‘eka-aluminum’), and how this prediction was vindicated, just six years later, helping to convince Mendeleyev’s critics of the fundamental truth of his periodic law.”

 

My favorite element is molybdenum (Mo, atomic number 42). My fondness has nothing to do with its chemical properties or its use in military armor, aircraft parts, electrical contacts and industrial motors. I just love saying that double iamb.