History of chemistry articles from across Nature Portfolio

The periodic system was formulated in the 1860s by analysing order and similarities among chemical elements, but it is unclear how the exponentially growing chemical space has affected the periodic system. Here, evolution of the chemical space between 1800 and 2021 is analyzed, and it is shown that the system converged towards its current stable structure through six historical stages.

The relationship between synthetic discoveries and the materials breakthroughs that they enable is explored in this Perspective. It is concluded that most materials breakthroughs involve chemical compounds that were made out of curiosity or for an entirely different purpose. This conclusion has implications for the role of exploratory synthesis in materials research.

Pauling’s electronegativity scale has a fundamental value and uses accessible thermochemical data, but fails at predicting the bonding behavior for several elements. The authors propose their thermochemical scale based on experimental dissociation energies that provides dimensionless values for the electronegativity and recovers the correct trends throughout the periodic table.

Thomas Schlatzer and Véronique Gouverneur discuss why the chemistry of calcium fluoride is challenging, and how imaginative thinking based on fundamental principles can create positive change for the fluorochemical industry.

Moses Dike and Shudipto Konika Dishari explore lignin’s historic journey alongside human civilization and showcase its game-changing potential to drive sustainability without compromising performance.

Adam Noble discusses the diverse uses of eosin Y over its 150-year history, from its origin as a dye and pigment used by post-impressionist masters to its versatile reactivity as a catalyst in visible light photochemistry.

When one says the word alcohol to a non-chemist, it is typically in reference to ethanol, the first alcohol discovered. Chi Chen, Mahlet Garedew, and Stafford W. Sheehan toast ethanol’s past, present, and future.

We look back on the discovery of oxygen in light of its upcoming milestone anniversary and highlight the computational contributions to oxygen reduction and evolution in chemistry.

Since the first isolation of oxygen, chemists have explored oxygen reduction and evolution reactions. Now, computational chemists are trying to understand and predict the best catalysts for them. Here, the importance of various considerations for such calculations, as well as their challenges and opportunities, are discussed.