Is Chemistry Really Founded in Quantum Mechanics?

Challenges for the periodic systems of elements: chemical, historical and mathematical perspectives

Unveiling numerical trends among either atomic or equivalent weights that somehow preserved resemblances among elements was frequent in the 1860s. Standing out from the crowd, Meyer and Mendeleev went beyond numerical relationships, certainly motivated by a pedagogical aim. Both were after a system synthesizing the chemical knowledge of their times in an appealing way to be presented to chemistry students. Is it still the periodic system aiming at that? Is it really a map of the current chemistry landscape? Solving these questions entails addressing others such as: what is the periodic system?…