ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Individual Elements to Common Properties

• In Event: Histories of Chemistry

English Abstract

In the nineteenth century, authors of basic chemistry textbooks included a summary introduction to each of the chemical elements accepted by the field in their time, enumerating the physical and chemical properties of each one and often a brief history of its discovery. These lists were sometimes organized in alphabetical order, other times in named sets according to shared properties. By the mid-twentieth century, comprehensive lists of elements were relegated to reference tables, if present at all, and authors instead addressed the elements in the contexts of their periodic table groups, periods, and characteristics as determined by their subatomic structures. Some of the earlier named sets tracked with categories in the newer systems and retained their names as official terms, like the alkali metals, but others became vestigial. This paper looks textbooks’ shift in focus from the elemental to the subatomic, taking as a case study the rare earths, a named set that retained neither its official name nor many of its member elements, yet persists in the popular understanding.

Author

• Charlotte Abney Salomon, Science History Institute