Elemental gratitude, the Periodic Table and my dad

Original article on Medium.

Frank Robert Coe: April 17 1932 — June 17 2019

My father was trained as a scientist and, professionally, he would be considered an analytical or industrial chemist. He was significant in leading research into new and improved ways of welding — and he was influential in improving the quality of welding, central to so many aspects of industry, in UK and around the world. Both professionally and personally, he was someone who helped to create and form strong and sustainable bonds that were relevant in a broader context. He was a scientist in the classical sense of understanding and appreciating the intersection and relevance of humanity in science, and he saw no conflict between the sciences and the arts. He could find great beauty in music while appreciating the underlying maths and physics that make it happen. I’ve discovered that this ability to find value across disciplines is rare among scientists and I’m grateful to have learned it from him. His broadly based view harkens back to earlier chemists — like the Russian chemist Borodin, who is now better known as a composer or the Italian chemist Primo Levi, who was a talented author. These days, we have seen a resurgence of the importance of interdisciplinary approaches that weave music, art, literature and science together — for a fuller understanding of the human condition and world around us. In this sense, my father was ahead of his time.

2019 is the International Year of the Periodic Table — a celebration of that universally accepted alphabet of chemistry; that tool that defines the order of elements and helps us understand our world. The Periodic Table has also been used as a metaphor for life by Primo Levi who wrote a book called, appropriately, The Periodic Table, which related human experiences to the qualities of the elements; reactive, inert, valuable, rare. Oliver Sacks, the talented neurologist, clinician-scientist and award winning writer, also reflected on the arc of his life through the Periodic Table. In his book, Gratitude, he describes his fascination as a child with metals and minerals, rocks and geology. The chemical elements of the Periodic Table and his birthdays were always intertwined he writes — such that when he was eleven — he would say — “I am sodium” (element 11) and at seventy nine, “I am gold”. This makes sense because, of course, we are all, ultimately, fundamentally made up of chemicals and elements. In the final chapter of Gratitude, Sacks contemplates, correctly as it turned out, that lead (element 82) is likely to be his last birthday — but he also describes keeping a beautifully machined piece of beryllium (element 4) on his desk to remind him of his childhood and the great arc of his life, for which he was grateful. My father also had a deep appreciation for the elements of nature and the rhythms of life and also found great beauty and meaning in a beautifully turned piece of wood (mostly carbon — element 12).

The Periodic Table is an internationally recognized alphabet that scientists are expected to know. Like my father, I have forged a career as a research scientist, but as an A-level Chemistry student — I struggled with learning the periodic table — until my father introduced me to the famous Russian chemist, Professor Helibebcnoff. Who is Professor Helibebcnof — I hear you ask?! Professor Helibebcnof is not a real person — but the name represents the top row, more or less, of the periodic table (the first nine elements) and since the periodic table consists of columns of similarly behaving elements — if you have the element at the top of the column, you can deduce the rest. So HeLiBeBCNOF gives you the row with column leaders He — Helium (noble gases, Neon, Argon, Krypton etc.) Li — Lithium (the alkali metals, sodium, potassium), B- Boron, Beryllium, C — Carbon N- Nitrogen, O –Oxygen, F — Fluorine. I might not remember every aspect of chemistry I learned at A-level — but I’ll never forget, and will always be grateful for being introduced to the remarkable Professor Helibebcnof by my father.

We were fortunate to be able to celebrate my fathers 87th birthday in April and recently, when learning that Oliver Sacks defined his birthdays by chemical elements — I looked up element 87 to see what it was. I like to think my father would have been amused, and I now know that my mother always knew, that Element 87 is the one of rarest and most unique elements on earth — and it is called Francium.