Philip Stewart saw things differently. In 1951, Stewart saw Edgar Longman's spiraling depiction of the periodic table at the Science Exhibition at the Festival of Britain. The elliptical take on the elements resonanted more than the "boring version on the wall of the school lab, which had the grace of a pile of bricks" More than fifty years later, he's refined that that periodic table into the "Chemical Galaxy."
Slate offers a slideshow outlining the evolution of the periodic table and how we've understood the building blocks of our universe, ending in Stewart's new Chemical Galaxy.
There, told to author Jon Lackman, the Oxford ecologist explains, "The old table arose and survived because we live in a world of boxes...We're used to them. But I think the human brain is actually more comfortable with curves. The old, square forms were very convenient for old-style industry. But until a few thousand years ago, humans lived happily in a world without rectangles."
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