The joy of the periodic table, by Sir Martyn Poliakoff

Abstract

I cannot remember when I first saw a periodic table. I guess it was on my classroom wall at school when I was 14, a typical age for British schoolchildren to start studying chemistry in those days. But it has played an unexpectedly large role in my life. Surprisingly, my first inorganic chemistry textbook, published in 1961, did not include a periodic table at all—presumably it was not considered important. So I persuaded my parents to buy me one. Actually, they bought two: a magnificent blue one, which I hung on the wall of my bedroom and have long since lost, and a second, letter-sized copy, which still hangs in my office more than 50 years on. I suppose that part of the appeal to me has always been that it combines chemistry and Russia. My father was Russian and had decided that I would be a scientist long before