Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Oxygen has contributed to our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth by providing invaluable clues to geological processes — yet it still holds the key to some unsolved mysteries, as Mark H. Thiemens explains.
Sodium, ubiquitous on Earth in living organisms, oceans and minerals — all the way to table salt — may seem like one of the more ordinary elements. Margit S. Müller highlights why we, like the fairytale king, should not take it for granted.
Calcium is found throughout the solar system, the Earth's crust and oceans, and is an essential constituent of cells, shells and bones — yet it is curiously scarce in the upper atmosphere. John Plane ponders on this 25-year-old mystery.
Beginning with its origins as the archetypal and eponymously elusive rare-earth element, Dante Gatteschi explains why dysprosium and other lanthanides have cornered the market in molecular magnetism.
If ever there was an element that epitomizes the notion that chemicals might be good or bad depending on their use, arsenic must be it. Katherine Haxton explains why.
Thomas Rauchfuss marvels at the diversity of sulfur reactivity. Although it poisons most industrial catalysts, it adopts many forms in nature and takes on a variety of biological roles — including that of a biocatalyst.
Russell Boyd ponders on how selenium — despite close similarities with its neighbours of the chalcogen family, sulfur and tellurium — continues to reveal chemical and biological activities of its own.
Although it is mainly known for its toxicity, beryllium possesses an array of properties that makes it attractive for a variety of non-industrial purposes. Ralph Puchta discusses why it is not always best avoided.
Pilar Goya, Nazario Martín and Pascual Román relate how element 74 can be found in lamp filaments or weapon parts and also in literature, and continues to serve many purposes — no matter which of its two names it is given.
Pierangelo Metrangolo and Giuseppe Resnati celebrate the bicentenary of the discovery of iodine — a good time to also bring to its conclusion an international project that aims to define and categorize halogen bonding.
Katharina M. Fromm explains how, as well as catalysis and jewellery, silver serves a myriad of medicinal applications — some of which are even behind poetic traditions such as throwing coins in wishing wells.
