The Periodic Table

“The Periodic Table “ by Primo Levi (originally published in 1971) Primo Levi ( 1919 – 1987) was a chemist, a writer, and a survivor. of Auschwitz. In chemistry, the periodic table is a result of organizing chemical elements into families based on similarities of properties. For example, elements such as carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus are nonmetals, whereas iron, chromium, silver, gold, and mercury are metals. Metals such as potassium and sodium are alkali metals whereas iron, silver, and gold are transition metals. And so on.

Primo Levi's book “The Periodic Table” is a collection of essays that he wrote about particular times and events in his life. Each essay has as its title the name of a particular element, and the essay is built around the work that he was involved in, or some incident that involved that element, but the telling is immensely enriched by its personal and intellectual approach. Primo Levi's lifelong curiosity about the physical universe, about the how -and-why of matter, comes through in all the essays, beginning with his student days described in “Hydrogen”, and ending with an essay about “Carbon” , the building block of all living matter. Primo Levi was born in Turin, Italy, and was a Piedmontese Jew. Levi writes of this small community, interacting with others yet maintaining its own identity in the very first essay titled “Argon”, an element that together with helium and neon are referred to as the noble gases as they do not interact, under normal conditions, with other elements. The essay “Iron” is about his student days at the Chemical Institute in Turin, and also about Sandro, a classmate who loves rock and mountain climbing. Sandro is the first resistant fighter to be killed as World War II and the ruling government of Mussolini begin to take their toll. In 1941 Levi received his degree in chemistry, summa cum laude. But there were various restrictions against Jews. Levi eventually is hired as a chemist, at a mine run by the military, to analyze and optimize the recovery of nickel from the ores. Levi lives near the mine itself, and learns to apply and expand his knowledge and skills as a chemist.( see “Nickel”). The history of mines, mining lore and the local history from the local people end up in two very imaginative fictional stories, “Lead” and “Mercury”. In 1943, Germany invades Italy. Levi joins a partisan group but is captured and eventually deported to Auschwitz. He is put to work as a chemist in at the Buna Plant, near Auschwitz. In a chilling account, “Cerium” , Levi describes how hunger drove prisoners to steal anything that could be sold on the black market, in order to be able to buy food to survive.
As the Allies draw near, in 1945, the Germans force the prisoners to march towards Buchenwald. Primo Levi is left at Auschwitz because he has scarlet fever. He survives and is freed by the Russians. After the war, Levi returned to Turin, and his initial struggles to make ends meet as a freelance chemist are recounted, with a great sense of humor, in “”Arsenic”, “Nitrogen”, and “Tin”. Later Levi worked as an industrial chemist, and the essay “Vanadium” tells of his reactions when a business query to a German supplier results in a contact with Dr. Muller who was the civilian inspector of the Buna Plant, near Auschwitz, during the war. Unexpectedly, Muller dies before he and Levi meet..