In a relatively brief but masterful recounting, Professor Ulf Lagerkvist
traces the origins and seminal developments in the field of chemistry,
highlighting the discoveries and personalities of the individuals who
transformed the ancient myths of the Greeks, the musings of the
alchemists, the mystique of phlogiston into the realities and the laws
governing the properties and behavior of the elements; in short, how
chemistry became a true science. A centerpiece of this historical
journey was the triumph by Dmitri Mendeleev who conceived the Periodic
Law of the Elements, the relation between the properties of the elements
and their atomic weights but more precisely their atomic number. Aside
from providing order to the elements known at the time, the law
predicted the existence and atomic order of elements not then known but
were discovered soon after.An underlying but explicit intent of
Lagerkvist's survey is to address what he believes was a gross injustice
in denying Mendeleev the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1905 and again in
1906. Delving into the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' detailed
records concerning the nominations, Lagerkvist reveals the judging
criteria and the often heated and prejudicial arguments favoring and
demeaning the contributions of the competing contenders of those years.
Lagerkvist, who was a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences and has
participated in judging nominations for the chemistry prize, concludes
"It is in the nature of the Nobel Prize that there will always be a
number candidates who obviously deserve to be rewarded but never get the
accolade" -- Mendeleev was one of those.
