Chemistry of the Elements (2nd Edition)
By N. N. Greenwood & A. Earnshaw • Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997
Every field has one book that people refer to by its authors alone. In descriptive inorganic chemistry, that book is Greenwood and Earnshaw. Two professors from the University of Leeds set out to write the chemistry of every element — all of it, no shortcuts — and the second edition, published by Butterworth-Heinemann in 1997, remains the standard reference decades later. Ask for a book recommendation on inorganic chemistry in any forum, and this title appears within the first three answers.
Book at a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Book Name | Chemistry of the Elements |
| Authors | N. N. Greenwood & A. Earnshaw (School of Chemistry, University of Leeds) |
| Edition | Second Edition |
| Publisher | Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford |
| Year | 1997 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-7506-3365-9 |
| Pages | 1384 |
| Chapters | 31 |
| Language | English |
| File Format |
Why Inorganic Chemists Swear By It
Most inorganic textbooks are organised around concepts — bonding theories, symmetry, reaction types. Greenwood and Earnshaw organise around the periodic table itself. The book walks element by element, group by group, and each chapter follows the same dependable shape: where the element occurs, how it is produced industrially, its atomic and physical properties, then the full chemistry of its compounds.
That structure is what makes it work as both a textbook and a reference. Reading the sulfur or phosphorus chapter from start to finish rewards you with a connected story; dipping into the boron chapter for boranes and carboranes gives you exactly the depth an M.Sc exam question demands. The treatment of borderline favourites — hydrogen bonding under hydrogen, silicate structures under silicon, the fullerene chemistry of carbon — goes well past what general textbooks attempt.
The d-block gets the coverage it deserves too. Thirteen consecutive chapters cover the transition metals group by group, preceded by a substantial chapter on coordination and organometallic compounds, and followed by separate chapters on the lanthanides and the actinides. Nowhere else will you find the chemistry of, say, zirconium and hafnium or technetium laid out this readably in a single volume.
Drawings of structures appear throughout, and industrial processes are explained with real detail, which is a blessing when exams ask about production methods. At nearly 1400 pages it is a heavy companion, but nobody reads it cover to cover anyway. You keep it beside you and visit it, element by element, for years.
Complete Chapter Index
| Ch. | Title | Page |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Origin of the Elements. Isotopes and Atomic Weights | 1 |
| 2 | Chemical Periodicity and the Periodic Table | 20 |
| 3 | Hydrogen | 32 |
| 4 | Lithium, Sodium, Potassium, Rubidium, Caesium and Francium | 68 |
| 5 | Beryllium, Magnesium, Calcium, Strontium, Barium and Radium | 107 |
| 6 | Boron | 139 |
| 7 | Aluminium, Gallium, Indium and Thallium | 216 |
| 8 | Carbon | 268 |
| 9 | Silicon | 328 |
| 10 | Germanium, Tin and Lead | 367 |
| 11 | Nitrogen | 406 |
| 12 | Phosphorus | 473 |
| 13 | Arsenic, Antimony and Bismuth | 547 |
| 14 | Oxygen | 600 |
| 15 | Sulfur | 645 |
| 16 | Selenium, Tellurium and Polonium | 747 |
| 17 | The Halogens: Fluorine, Chlorine, Bromine, Iodine and Astatine | 789 |
| 18 | The Noble Gases: Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon and Radon | 888 |
| 19 | Coordination and Organometallic Compounds | 905 |
| 20 | Scandium, Yttrium, Lanthanum and Actinium | 944 |
| 21 | Titanium, Zirconium and Hafnium | 954 |
| 22 | Vanadium, Niobium and Tantalum | 976 |
| 23 | Chromium, Molybdenum and Tungsten | 1002 |
| 24 | Manganese, Technetium and Rhenium | 1040 |
| 25 | Iron, Ruthenium and Osmium | 1070 |
| 26 | Cobalt, Rhodium and Iridium | 1113 |
| 27 | Nickel, Palladium and Platinum | 1144 |
| 28 | Copper, Silver and Gold | 1173 |
| 29 | Zinc, Cadmium and Mercury | 1201 |
| 30 | The Lanthanide Elements (Z = 58–71) | 1227 |
| 31 | The Actinide and Transactinide Elements (Z = 90–112) | 1250 |
Who Should Read It
The book presumes some familiarity with basic bonding and periodic trends, which places it comfortably at the postgraduate level. M.Sc students use it as the backbone of their main inorganic papers, and CSIR-NET aspirants will find that a large share of inorganic questions trace back to topics this book covers in depth. For GATE, it is the go-to source for group trends and industrial chemistry questions that standard notes tend to gloss over.
This is the inorganic counterpart to the organic classics on this site — Carey & Sundberg Parts A and B, and Warren's Designing Organic Syntheses.
Download the Book
Download the complete PDF below and keep the whole periodic table at your fingertips.
⇩ Download PDF — Chemistry of the Elements (2e)File: PDF • 2nd Edition, 1997 • For study purposes only. If the link does not work, please leave a comment below so we can fix it.