Chemistry lecturer and author Dr Eric Scerri, an expert of the periodic table, was involved in the conversations about possible changes to the periodic table.
Scerri, and some of his colleagues interested in the history of chemistry, recently held a symposium at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in order to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the periodic table. This meeting, as well as the philosophical underpinnings of periodic classification, were recently the focus of an in-depth feature article in the
New York Times
that has been reprinted in newspapers and websites across the world.
Read the New York Times article here.
Dr. Eric Scerri is a world expert on the periodic table.
It has been a busy year for Scerri. In August, he discussed the periodic table with NBC’s Dateline and he visited Saint Petersburg, Russia to attend the 4th International Conference on the Periodic Table, which he helped to organize.
He has given several lectures in a dozen countries this summer, and he has been interviewed by many media sources including Future Tech, The Daily Bruin, BBC Radio 4, and Chemical & Engineering News. Scerri also discussed his passion for the periodic table in a recent UCLA College video.
Scerri is the author or editor of twelve books and a full-time lecturer in the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the international journal Foundations of Chemistry that covers the history and philosophy of chemistry, and chemical education. He was the historical consultant for the 2015 PBS docudrama Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements in which he is interviewed extensively about the creator of the periodic table, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. To learn more about Scerri, visit his website.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
