Elements

Husband, I come,
elements
I give to baser life
— William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Antony and Cleopatra, V, ii, 290, 292-3

… A genesis of the elements such as is sketched out would not be confined to our little Solar System, but would probably follow the same general sequence of events in every centre of energy now visible as a star.
— Sir William Crookes, Nature 34, 423: 2 September 1986, reproduced in Nature 323, 19, 4 September 1986.

When the elements are arranged in vertical columns according to increasing atomic weight, so that the horizontal lines contain analogous elements again according to increasing atomic weight, an arrangement results from which several general conclusions may be drawn. [The table was then given]

1. The elements, arranged according to magnitude of atomic weight, show a periodic change of properties.

2. Chemically analogous elements have atomic weights either in close agreement (Pt, Ir, Os), or increasing by equal amounts (K, Rb, Cs).

3. The arrangement according to atomic weights corresponds with the valency of the elements and, to a certain extent, to the difference in chemical behaviour, e.g., Li, Be, B, C, N, O, F … .

6. The discovery of many new elements may be foreseen; for example, analogues of Si and Al, with atomic weights between 65 and 75.

7. Some atomic weights will presumably suffer correction; for example, Te cannot have the atomic weight 128, but 123 to 126.

8. From the table, new analogies become apparent. Thus, U appears as an analogue of Bo and Al, which is in harmony with experience.
— Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834 – 1907).

There was taken a considerable quantity of Man’s Urine (because the Liquor yields but a small proportion of the desired Quintessence) and of this a good part at least, had been for a pretty while digested before it was used. Then this Liquor was distilled with a moderate Heat, till the Spirituous and Saline parts were drawn off … till the remaining Substance was brought to the consistence of a somewhat thick Syrup, or a thin Extract. This done, it was well incorporated with thrice its Weight of fine White Sand; and the Mixture put into a strong Stone-Retort. [The retort was then heated, slowly at first, and then intensely to obtain phosphorus.]
— Robert Boyle (1627 – 1691), describing the making of phosphorus, quoted in New Scientist, 30 June 1977, 769.

All the elements consist entirely in the form of atoms, which you can think of as roughly spherical corpuscles, so tiny that there are billions of them in the smallest visible speck of matter. These elementary particles do not coalesce or run together to form large ones in the way that two drops of water will join to a larger drop, but atoms may be joined together to give molecules of all shapes and sizes.
— Sir Robert Robinson (1886 – 1975), ‘Atoms and Molecules’ from Science Lifts the Veil, 1942, first given as a radio talk in 1942.

Sir William Bragg compares the atoms of the elements with the twenty-six letters of the alphabet and the molecules with the millions of different words that can be constructed of them and of which we use only a few thousand.
— Sir Robert Robinson (1886 – ?), ‘Atoms and Molecules’, from Science Lifts the Veil, 1942.

As far as I could, I designated simple substances by simple names … so that they express the most general and characteristic property of the substance.
— Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743 – 1794), Traité de Chimie (1793).

Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.
— Sir James Jeans (1877 – 1946), The Mysterious Universe.

Nitrogen is nitrogen, it passes miraculously from the air into plants, from these into animals, and from animals to us; when its function in our body is exhausted, we eliminate it, but it still remains nitrogen, aseptic, innocent.
— Primo Levi (1919 – 1987), ‘Nitrogen’ in The Periodic Table (1985).

If you like nitrogen, go and get a druggist to give you a canful of it at the soda counter, and let you sip it with a straw.
— Stephen Leacock (1869-1944), Literary Lapses (1910).

The feeling of it to my lungs was not sensibly different from that of air, but I fancied that my breast felt peculiarly easy and light for some time afterwards. Who can tell but that, in time, this pure air mat become a fashionable article in luxury? Hitherto only two mice and myself have had the privilege of breathing it.
— Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), describing oxygen.

Ohne Phosphor, kein Gedanke [without phosphorus, there would be no thoughts
— Ludwig Buechner (1824 – 1899) (attributed).

There is general agreement among historians that the early beginnings of chemistry were largely founded on a metallurgical basis …
— A. J. Berry, From Classical to Modern Chemistry, 1954, Dover edition 1968, 129.

Cuspidors made out of platinum
Would buckle and bend if you sat in ‘em.
            You can make them of rhodium
            But never of sodium
Because then they’d explode if you spat in ‘em.
— J. W. Cornforth, quoted by Jane Figgis, Search 23(2), 1992: 43.

Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered Sodium.
— Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875 – 1956), More Biography.

Moseley’s rules

1. Every element from aluminium to gold is characterised by an integer N which determines its X-ray spectrum. Every detail in the spectrum of an element can therefore be predicted from the spectra of its neighbours.

2. This integer N, the atomic number of the element, is identified with the number of positive units of electricity contained in the atomic nucleus.

3. The atomic numbers for all elements from Al [aluminium] to Au [gold] have been tabulated on the assumption that N for Al is 13.

4. The order of the atomic numbers is the same as that for the atomic weights, except where the latter disagrees with the order of the chemical properties.

5. Known elements correspond with all numbers between 13 and 79 except three. There are three possible elements still undiscovered.
— Henry Gwyn-Jeffreys Moseley (1887 – 1915).

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