Iridium Quotes

And I often dream of chemistry at night, dreams that conflate the past and the present, the grid of the periodic table transformed to the grid of Manhattan. [...] Sometimes, too, I dream of the indecipherable language of tin (a confused memory, perhaps, of its plaintive "cry”). But my favorite dream is of going to the opera (I am Hafnium), sharing a box at the Met with the other heavy transition metals-my old and valued friends-Tantalum, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platinum, Gold, and Tungsten. (Oliver Sacks)
Here, for the first time, we find ourselves a little at issue with the accepted system of chemistry. Fluorine stands at the head of a group-called the inter-periodic-whereof the remaining members are (see Crookes' table, p. 28), manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel; ruthenium, rhodium, palladium; osmium, iridium, platinum. If we take all these as group V, we find that fluorine and manganese are violently forced into company with which they have hardly any points of relationship, and that they intrude into an otherwise very harmonious group of closely similar composition. (Chapter III. The Later Researches, Part V.-The Bars Groups) View quote
Annie Besant