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The 1870s marked the onset of an exceptionally fruitful and dynamic period in the development of chemistry in the Czech Lands. University education and research in chemistry was taking place at several universities and technical universities, where the structure of the main chemical subjects developed gradually into organic, inorganic, analytical, physical, fermentation, and medical chemistry, just to mention the main specialties. At the same time, the process of the Czech National Revival led to the cultural, linguistic, social, and political emancipation of the modern Czech nation and stepwise almost entirely separated the linguistically Czech and German scientific communities in all their representations, including university education. In Prague, the divided German and Czech Polytechnics (and later Technical Universities) existed since 1869, whereas the Charles-Ferdinand University split into its Czech and German counterparts only in the years 1882 and 1883. The chemical community was organized in several professional associations that also reflected the ethnic division of the scientific scene. The Society of Czech Chemists, founded in 1866, had almost exclusively Czech membership, while a specialized German chemical association has never been created in the Czech Lands. This study deals with two closely intertwined themes: the reception of the periodic system in the Czech Lands and in Europe and the crucial role of the Czech chemist Bohuslav Brauner in this process. I am going to demonstrate a specific set of conditions that shaped the process of appropriation of this new scientific idea by not only scholarly argumentation, but also particular circumstances, in this case Slavic nationalism and Russophilia in the Czech society at the turn of the nineteenth century. The course of dissemination and reception of the periodic system also showed linkage to the linguistic emancipation of the Czech nation as reflected in the controversy over the Czech chemical terminology, where the periodic system served as argument to one party of the dispute.

The question of precisely which elements should be placed in group 3 of the periodic table has been debated from time to time with apparently no resolution. This question has also received a recent impetus from several science news articles following an article in Nature Magazine in which the measurement of the ionization energy of the element lawrencium was reported for the first time. We believe that this question is of considerable importance for chemists and physicists as well as students of these subjects. It is our experience that students are typically puzzled by the fact that published periodic tables show variation in the way that group 3 is displayed. Instructors typically cannot answer questions that students may have on this matter. The aim of this chapter is to make a clear-cut recommendation regarding the membership of group 3, which we believe should consist of the elements scandium, yttrium, lutetium, and lawrencium. Although the arguments in favor of replacing lanthanum and actinium by lutetium and lawrencium are rather persuasive there is a popular and mistaken belief that IUPAC supports the traditional periodic table with lanthanum and actinium in group 3. This view has been disputed by Jeffrey Leigh in an interesting article in which he made it clear that IUPAC has not traditionally taken a view as to the correctness of any version of the periodic table and that there is no such thing as an officially approved IUPAC periodic table. We will briefly review the previous arguments that have been provided in favor of moving lutetium and lawrencium into group 3 of the periodic table in place of lanthanum and actinium. We will then reiterate what we take to be a categorical argument in favor of this placement and will discuss any remaining issues. When added to other arguments made over more than 50 years it becomes clear that the time may have arrived for IUPAC to make a ruling on this question.