The book...offers a series of wide-ranging and in part innovative scholarly analyses of the subject. The attentive reader will not find a final answer to what an element is, but he or she will better appreciate the complexity and many facets of the question.
Eric Scerri is a leading philosopher of science specializing in the history and philosophy of chemistry and especially the periodic table. He is also the founder and editor in chief of the international journal Foundations of Chemistry and has been a full-time lecturer at UCLA for the past twenty years where he regularly teaches classes of 350 chemistry students as well as classes in history and the philosophy of science. Altogether, Scerri has
authored or edited a total of 11 books and over 150 journal articles.
Elena Ghibaudi is a bioinorganic chemist with interest in the philosophy of chemistry and chemical education. She is Assistant Professor within the Department of Chemistry at the University of Torino in Italy, and she teaches classes in general and bioinorganic chemistry, as well as in chemical education. Ghibaudi is the author of several articles in the field of chemical education and the philosophy of chemistry including an influential article on the notion of chemical
element. She is a member of the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry.