'Footnotes to the periodic table' is the epithet introduced by the editor of this sixth volume of the new successor to Brauer's justly-famous Handbuch der Praparativen Anorganischen Chemie. But what footnotes they are; and what a lot they can tell us about the main text above them.

The isolation and characterisation of the lanthanide and actinide series of elements, and of their simple compounds, are the two really heroic episodes in the development of modern inorganic chemistry. The ...

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