Every field of science has its favorite anniversary. For physics, it’s Newton’s Principia of 1687, the book that introduced the laws of motion and gravity. Biology celebrates Darwin’s On the Origin of ...

The story of the fifteenth element began in Hamburg, in 1669. The unsuccessful glassblower and alchemist Hennig Brandt was trying to find the philosopher’s stone, a mythical substance that could turn ...

The rare radioactive substance made its way from the United States to Russia on a commercial flight in June 2009. Customs officers balked at accepting the package, which was ensconced in lead ...

Element Z=117 has been acknowledged this week by a team of scientists, these scientists having successfully created several atoms of said element in a lab. This lovely piece of creation will – once it ...

The periodic table of chemical elements hangs in front of chemistry classrooms worldwide and is an icon for science. Yet much was unknown about its history -- until now. The periodic table reflects ...

A century and a half ago, a Russian chemistry professor published a classification of all the known elements, organized by atomic weight. Today, the system that he created for his students — plus some ...

For five years, Dr. B. Smith Hopkins, professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Illinois, had been searching through a gathering of old friends and nodding acquaintances to discover one of ...

The periodic table has become an icon of science. Its rows and columns provide a tidy way of showcasing the elements — the ingredients that make up the universe. It seems obvious today, but it wasn’t ...