I would first like to thank my dear ones. My parents, who got me writing, and never asked too often what exactly I was going to do with myself once I’d started. My lovely Paula, who held my hand. My siblings, Ben and Becca, who taught me mischief. All my other friends and family from South Dakota and around the country, who supported me and got me out of the house. And finally my various teachers and professors, who first related many of the stories here, without realizing they were doing something so valuable.
I would furthermore like to thank my agent, Rick Broadhead, who believed that this project was a swell idea and that I was the one to write it. I owe a lot as well to my editor at Little, Brown, John Parsley, who saw what this book could be and helped shape it. Also invaluable were others at and around Little, Brown, including Cara Eisenpress, Sarah Murphy, Peggy Freudenthal, Barbara Jatkola, and many unnamed others who helped design and improve this book.
I offer thanks, too, to the many, many people who contributed to individual chapters and passages, either by fleshing out stories, helping me hunt down information, or offering their time to explain something to me. These include Stefan Fajans; Theodore Gray of www.periodictable.com; Barbara Stewart at Alcoa; Jim Marshall of the University of North Texas; Eric Scerri of the University of California at Los Angeles; Chris Reed at the University of California, Riverside; Nadia Izakson; the communications team at Chemical Abstracts Service; and the staff and science reference librarians at the Library of Congress. If I’ve left anyone off this list, my apologies. I remain thankful, if embarrassed.
Finally, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Dmitri Mendeleev, Julius Lother Meyer, John Newlands, Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois, William Odling, Gustavus Hinrichs, and the other scientists who developed the periodic table—as well as thousands of other scientists who contributed to these fascinating stories about the elements.