Kit Chapman (2)

It's the International Year of the Periodic Table, and I can't think of a better book to mark the occasion than Kit Chapman's gripping and intriguing history of the quest to create new elements. There are anecdotes here that will delight, surprise, inspire and frustrate, woven together with the kind of page-turning momentum you'd expect from an adventure novel At its core, though, it's a story about a particular tribe of scientists, and the lives, rivalries and alliances that they forged as show more they pushed back one of the great frontiers of knowledge. Those two facets can't have been easy to balance, but Chapman has succeeded in turning this under-appreciated topic in to an effortless, fun, but by no means superficial book. show less

Superheavy is an interesting and engaging review of how the periodic table was populated with the synthetic elements. Chapman writes in a conversational prose that is easy to follow and captures the personality of the scientists involved. He clearly explains the processed involved in creating new elements, and gives credit to both the chemists and physicists involved. All too often, the realm of nuclear reactors is thought to be the exclusive province of theoretical physicists, but Chapman show more shows how different skills were necessary to create and characterize the heavy elements. The book captures the successes, failures, lucky guesses and mistakes (because science involves all of these) and provides a book that should stand next to the perennial classic, Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb. This is a must read for all scholars of scientific history as well as students eager to understand more about the nature of the periodic table.

I received a digital ARC via NetGalley show less

Fast paced, highly readable, and hugely entertaining. I’m not even inherently interested in physics and chemistry but it kept my attention right to the end. You don’t need to know a lot about the natural world. A few key concepts are explained in simple images so you can follow along. This is a narrative history of the discoveries, not an explanation of them. There are also some jokes.

The book is poorly illustrated but there’s a documentary here

show more target="_top">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe5WT22-AO8

which focuses on the Ninov fraud and which uses this book as a main source. It has the best graphical representation of the periodic table I’ve seen and really helped me understand what these scientists were doing. show less

Stories about the discovery of the synthetic elements. A little biography of the main scientists who worked on this throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A few photos. Was a very interesting and engaging read.