Controversy with Alfred Werner

In 1905, Piccini initiated a last defense of Mendeleev, this time focused on the new periodic table proposed by Alfred Werner [71] (1866-1919) [72]  

It is easy to say that you have provided a simpler scheme of the elements by looking only at their principal characteristics but, whether the most principal characteristic is the combining form then, like it or not, here we are back at Mendeleev or not, then we will continue to grope among subjective opinions, scholarly prejudices, and mathematical exercises, as chemists have done for half a century with httle to show for it. 

This note, sent for publication only a month before he died, was Piccini s last effort to sustain the Mendeleevian character of the periodic system, a subject that he found ever fascinating and which he contemplated for a quarter of a century, making himself, with his experience, an absolute master. 

The extension of the hypothesis of Amedeo Avogadro (1776-1856) to dilute solutions proposed by Jacobus Henricus van t HoflF (1852-1911), opened a new direction for experimental research within inorganic chemistry. Piccini imderstood the importance of new theories, while, at the same time, he continued to pursue his favorite topic systematics. The problem that he found most interesting was to understand the isomerism of the green and violet salts of chromium [73] in the form of the sesquioxides, a problem that Werner had addressed with his coordination theory [74]. 

Although Piccini found learning new languages easy, he used his talents exclusively in the study of chemistry he traveled little and that travel was within Italy. After his father s death in 1886, followed almost a decade later by that of his mother, in 1895, he married a widow, Maria Banchi (1866-1933), and welcomed into his home children from her first marriage. He bought a house in Florence where he and his wife led a relatively secluded life. In 1899, their daughter Elisabetta was bom. 

---