Revisiting Newlands' law of octaves: Tuning in on transition metals

Abstract

Chemistry and Music have many connections in both practice and practitioners. Both have layered complexities underpinned by harmonics and mathematical roots. Where music has its octave, chemistry has its octet. Famous in both fields, Alexander Borodin is known for composing “In the Steppes of Central Asia” and for a posthumous Tony award from his music used in a Broadway musical some two-thirds of a century after his death. He is also credited, along with Charles Wurtz, with independent co-discovery of the aldol condensation in 1872 while working with Emil Erlenmeyer. During Borodin’s time in Germany, he met Dmitri Mendeleev before the fellow Russian unveiled his “periodic system” in 1869 that would become the foundation of the periodic table.