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Gregory Girolami recounts how element 76 beat a close competitor to the title of densest known metal and went on to participate in Nobel Prize-winning reactions.
Catherine Renouf describes how indium went from being a rather inconspicuous element to one whose role as a component of high-technology devices and gadgets may deplete its worldwide resources.
You would be forgiven if you thought the most important element in an organic transformation was carbon. Matthew Hartings argues that, for just over half a century in many of chemistry's most renowned organic reactions, it has actually been palladium.