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 ...

One hundred fifty years after Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published his system for neatly arranging the elements, the periodic table it gave birth to hangs in every chemistry classroom in the ...

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 first version of Mendeleev’s periodic table, published in 1869, was reportedly completed in just one day. Historians have pieced together what happened during that day. On the morning of February ...

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 ...

More than a thousand different versions of the periodic table have been created since Dmitri Mendeleev drew the first 150 years ago – but why is one version more familiar to us than practically every ...

Editor's note: The following is a text-only version. The complete version with artwork is available for purchase here (PDF). The periodic table of the elements is one of the most powerful icons in ...