The inorganic chemist R.J.P. Williams (1926-2015) is known best for identifying the Irving-Williams series with Harry Irving in 1953, but Williams is also well known for many contributions to biochemistry. In the final decades of his life, Williams published several books and articles applying the principles of inorganic chemistry (including the Irving-Williams series) to natural history. In these publications, he wrote as a historian telling a narrative of chemical evolution. After the turn of the century, genetic evidence supported many aspects of his synthesis of geochemistry, biochemistry, and inorganic chemistry, culminating in a chemical sequence for the evolution of life on Earth.<br/><br/>I have adapted Williams’ historical narrative for a general audience and contrasted it with Stephen Jay Gould’s “Tape of Life” narrative in the new book <i>A World From Dust: How the Periodic Table Shaped Life</i>. Williams developed his narrative by applying his experience as an inorganic chemist and biochemist to four billion years of natural history. Williams’ chemical thinking led to his hypotheses of specific ways in which chemistry constrained the historical possibilities open to biology through chemical availabilities, reactivities, and solubilities. These chemical constraints shaped the trajectory of evolution into a story that can be told to a general audience as an engaging, interdisciplinary narrative of "big history." This narrative shows how the regular organization of the periodic table led to regularities in the chemical sequence of the development of Earth and life, ultimately highlighting the historical explanatory power of the discipline of chemistry.

R.J.P. Williams and the chemical sequence of natural history

251st National Meeting (2016)

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