Chemistry historical survey

The concept of chemical periodicity is central to the study of inorganic chemistry. No other generalization rivals the periodic table of the elements in its ability to systematize and rationalize known chemical facts or to predict new ones and suggest fruitful areas for further study. Chemical periodicity and the periodic table now find their natural interpretation in the detailed electronic structure of the atom indeed, they played a major role at the turn of the century in elucidating the mysterious phenomena of radioactivity and the quantum effects which led ultimately to Bohr s theory of the hydrogen atom. Because of this central position it is perhaps not surprising that innumerable articles and books have been written on the subject since the seminal papers by Mendeleev in 1869, and some 700 forms of the periodic table (classified into 146 different types or subtypes) have been proposed. A brief historical survey of these developments is summarized in the Panel opposite. 

Qualitative and quantitative relations between enthalpy and entropy were observed several times in the 1920 s, and their importance was rightly recognized by some authors. However, some ideas from this early work seem to have been overlooked later, perhaps because they were connected with obsolete theories or because they were developed independently in the fields of organic chemistry, catalysis, and pure physical chemistry. For this reason, a brief historical survey seems appropriate. 

Science and civilisation in China. Volume 5. Chemistry and chemical technology. Part HI Spagyrical discovery and invention Historical survey, from cinnebar elixirs to synthetic insulin, by Joseph Needham, Ho Ping-Yu, Lu Gwei-Djen and Nathan Sivin. Cambridge Cambridge Univ P, 1976. 

Jean-Louis Rivail and Bernard Maigret, Computational Chemistry in France A Historical Survey. 

G. B. Kauffman, General historical survey to 1930 , in Comprehensive Coordination Chemistry, ed. G. Wilkinson, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1987,Vol. 

Tnis general historical survey of cyclopropane chemistry can ire concluded with a consideration of some of the more important physico-chemical data which have been obtained in this field. 

The chronological hst in Table 4 of some historically significant events in coordination chemistry is intended to supplement the more detailed previous historical survey. Being illustrative rather than exhaustive, it is necessarily incomplete, for many other valuable contributions have not been included because of lack of space. 

Purpose of the Search. Research into the older literature of chemistry is an expensive and time-consuming procedure, and must, therefore, be undertaken only when circumstances warrant it. In ordinary industrial laboratory procedure it is seldom necessary to search back beyond 1875, while even the period 1875 to 1900 often yields little of value from the standpoint of modem manufacture. On the other hand, for purposes of fundamental research, or in preparing a detailed historical survey of some field of chemical endeavor, it is often very desirable to prepare properly documented accounts of the earliest work. 

For accounts of the resistance to atomism and the rise of structural chemistry, see Brock (1967, 1992) and Knight (1992). Mason (1976) provides a historical survey of stereochemistry. Some biographical background to Pasteur s researches can be found in Jacques (1993). 

As with most historical surveys, a chronological description of parallel developments does not do justice to the several distinct sequences of ideas sometimes inherent in the subject. Thus, in this case, while the quantum chemists were trying to solve the Schrodinger equation through ab initio computations as described above, other calculational methods being developed for computers in chemistry were more immediately interesting to the experimental chemists. Mulliken in his Nobel Prize speech hoped that chemists could go to the computing machine instead of the laboratory, but the idea more prevalent today is that the interplay of computers and experimental chemistry aids best the development of chemistry as a useful branch of science. 

G. Draganic and Z. D. Draganic, chapter 1, Historical Survey of the Radiation Chemistry of Water, The Radiation Chemistry of Water, Academic Press, New York, 1971... 

The brief historical survey given in Table 1-1 shows just how the closely ftie development of catalysis is linked to the history of industrial chemistry [4]. 

For a historical survey of plastics, see S.T.I. Mossman and Peter J.T. Morris, eds. The Development of Plastics (Cambridge Royal Society of Chemistry, special publication no. 141,1994). 

Spiniello, M., White, J. M. (2003). Low-temperature X-ray structural studies of the ester and ether derivatives of cis- and trans-4-tert-butyl cyclohexanol and 2-adamantanol apphcation of the variable oxygen probe to determine the relative a -donor ability of C-H and C-C bonds. Organic, Biomolecular Chemistry, 1, 3094—3101. This paper also provides an excellent historic survey of this problem. 

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