The Periodic Table: A Very Short Introduction

In this authoritative Very Short Introduction to the periodic table, Eric Scerri presents a modern and fresh exploration of this fundamental topic in the physical sciences, considering the deeper implications of the arrangements of the table to atomic physics and quantum mechanics. Scerri looks at the trends in properties of elements that led to the construction of the periodic table, and how the deeper meaning of its structure gradually became apparent with the development of atomic theory and quantum mechanics, so that physics arguably came to colonize an entirely different science, chemistry.

Eric Scerri is a lecturer in chemistry as well as history and philosophy of science at the University of California, Los Angeles.  He has authored several books and over 100 scholarly articles in history and philosophy of science, especially in the area of chemistry.   He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the Springer journal "Foundations of Chemistry". 
See Scerri's new website which contains many resources at
ericscerri.com/