Let’s be honest: most contemporary awareness weeks and anniversaries are commercially-driven attempts to garner social media clicks and buzz.

But occasionally there’s something worth noting related to the humanities or the sciences. Herewith, the United Nations has declared 2019 the International Year of the Periodic Table.

“The Periodic Table” by James Nicholls is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

Honoring Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev’s publication 150 years ago of, according to the New York Times, “the first recognizable periodic table, arranging the 63 elements then known by increasing atomic number — the total number of protons in an atomic nucleus — and in vertical stacks that corresponded to recurring patterns or properties.”

Why not celebrate this achievement in organization and chemistry by dropping in to the RBML and exploring our chemistry-related archival collections and oral histories?