2019 – International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements

Did you know that 150 years ago Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev discovered and established the Periodic System for the benefit for all mankind?

By: Ringo Bones

2019 became the official International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements after the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed it during its 74^th Plenary Meeting back in December 20, 2017. And based on the 202 EX/Decision 43, the 2019 International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements – also known as the IYPT 2019 – was adopted by the UNESCO General Conference at its 39^th Session (39 C/decision 60). Back in April 1, 2018, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) joined in the planning and coordination to make the IYPT 2019 to be “more visible” to everyone concerned. Well, the IUPAC succeeded in making the 2011 International Year of Chemistry more or less visible to everyone concerned back then.

1869 is considered as the year of the discovery of the Periodic System by the Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev. The IYPT 2019 also commemorates the 150^th anniversary of the establishment of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. The International Year aims to recognize the importance of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements as one of the most important and influential achievements in modern science reflecting the essence not only of chemistry, but also of physics, biology and other basic sciences disciplines. The IYPT 2019 is also an opportunity to reflect upon many aspects of the periodic table, including its history, the role of women in research, global trends and perspectives on science for sustainable development and the social and economic impacts of this field.  

Said to be inspired by the card game solitaire, Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of chemical elements is based on the Russian chemist’s discovery that a natural order existed among the elements. Mendeleev arranged the chemical elements according to their atomic weight and then pointed out that elements side by side in adjacent columns – i.e. vanadium, niobium and tantalum – behaved in the same way chemically. Mendeleev’s newly discovered periodic table of chemical elements was so accurate that it allowed him to accurately predict the chemical properties of elements not yet discovered during his lifetime. By the way, Dmitri Mendeleev was born in 1834 in Siberia and passed away in 1934.

Did John G. Trump Send Nikola Tesla To The Obscurity Dustbin of History?

Given that President Trump had recently managed to drag his rather obscure scientist uncle with his latest climate change denying Tweet, did John G. Trump played his part in sending Nikola Tesla to the obscurity dustbin of history?

By: Ringo Bones

Despite of being praised by Albert Einstein as the smartest scientist who ever lived, it wasn’t until the mid to late 1980 – primarily through the Californian heavy metal band Tesla and sometimes not even so – where non scientists and non engineers became familiar again with the life and work of Nikola Tesla. Fast forward to 2018 where President Trump mentioned his MIT trained scientist paternal uncle named John G. Trump as the reason why he is “genetically qualified” to declare that climate change is a hoax. Politicking aside, did John G. Trump was really responsible for sending Nikola Tesla to obscurity?

John George Trump was a physicist who got his PhD from MIT in 1933. In 1942 he became Secretary of the Microwave Committee – a sub-committee of the National Defense Research Committee. When Nikola Tesla passed away in 1943 in the New York Hotel, Trump was one of the top experts who declared that Tesla’s papers were not of strategic significance despite after declassification of some of them in May 2018 that there’s a plausibility that Tesla’s famed “Death Ray” might have worked.

Before he passed away in February 21, 1985, the then US President Ronald Reagan has awarded John G. Trump the National Medal of Science in 1983. I think this was probably the last of the general public had heard of him after being recently mentioned in President Trump’s “crazy climate change denial Tweets” in the autumn of 2018. Given his sway of authority in America’s wartime department during World War II, is it fair to say that John G. Trump really possessed the power and authority to send the Croatian émigré and inventor way ahead of his time Nikola Tesla to the obscurity dustbin of history?