Periodic Tales

Hugh Aldersey-Williams sets out to rescue the periodic table from the classroom wall chart and put it back into human hands. His central claim is that elements only matter to most of us through what we've made of them culturally: gold as a symbol of permanence and greed, iron as the metal of both warfare and industry, mercury as alchemical mystery turned modern poison. Rather than organizing his book by atomic number, he groups elements by human theme, power, fire, craft, beauty, earth, arguing that this is actually closer to how ordinary people encounter chemistry than the periodic table's tidy rows ever were.

This matters because it corrects a common misconception that science and culture are separate domains. Aldersey-Williams shows that the properties scientists measure in a lab, reactivity, density, color, toxicity, are the very same properties that made certain elements sacred, valuable, feared, or fashionable long before anyone understood atomic structure. Understanding an element's chemistry, he suggests, is incomplete without understanding the folklore and commerce that grew up around it.

Who should read it

Curious generalists who enjoyed narrative science writing, along with anyone who found high school chemistry dull but has always been quietly fascinated by why gold is valuable or why mercury thermometers disappeared, will find this an engaging entry point.

About the author

Hugh Aldersey-Williams is a British science writer and designer who has written extensively on the cultural history of scientific ideas and materials.