It has been 150 years since D.I. Mendeleev formulated the Periodic law and expressed it visually in the form of a table of elements in 1869. As is clearly well known today, Mendeleev's ideas, confirmed by the discovery of the elements he predicted, turned out to be very promising indeed. However, Mendeleev was not the first, nor the only scientist…

Describes the life of Niels Bjerrum, a Danish physical chemist, best known as the originator of the concept that strong electrolytes are almost completely dissociated into ions in solution. (Author/JN)

This paper seeks to assess the current state of academic research in light of long-term trends in the development of science. It presents three perspectives on the growth of scientific research: (1) Derek de Solla Price's (1963) hypothesis that science has exhibited exponential growth, roughly doubling every 15 years since the 17th century; (2)…

The author discusses some reasons for constraints that society places on science. Restraints on scientific inquiry and research are imposed when a scientific pursuit comes into conflict with widely held social values or when the pursuit is questioned in terms of "good science." These restraints reflect different views of the role of free inquiry…