Guillermo Restrepo (Leipzig)
Computational History of Chemistry: the Evolution of the Chemical Space and its Effects upon the Periodic System
25.11.2021
Ort: Historicum K 026
Zeit: 16-18 Uhr
By computationally treating large corpora of chemical information spanning more than 200 years of history, we can detect large-scale patterns and derive models for the evolution of chemistry. In the first part of this lecture, a formal framework for the study of the evolution of chemical knowledge from a data-driven perspective shall be presented. In particular, the evolution of the “chemical space” (the collection of substances and reactions reported in the history of chemistry) will be discussed. The second part examines the effect of the expanding chemical space between 1800 and 1869 upon the periodic system. Not only will the periodic system be shown to be an evolving object, but also does the chemical space of the 1840s appear as mature enough to contain the salient features of the periodic system that were formulated in the 1860s. Our twofold approach to the interplay between the chemical space and the periodic system (“presentist” and “retrodictive”) allows us in the last respect to build up likely periodic systems from Dalton and Berzelius up to Gmelin, Meyer and Mendeleev which contrast with the traditional account that the 1860s was the ripe moment to formulate the system.