Neon is normally odorless and colorless, reacting with no one, not even itself. Abundant in the universe, uncommon on Earth, it drifts aloof from any bond. When isolated by Sir William Ramsay and Morris Travers inside a vacuum tube in 1898, the noble gas betrayed its excitement in brilliant red. That excitement, glowing within Georges Claude’s ingeniously curved lamps since 1923, has captured our imaginations ever since.

In the spirit of amplifying the Black Lives Matter movement and to avoid any appearance of having appropriated that title, our series of talks formerly called Everything Matters: Tales from the Periodic Table will now be called, simply, Tales from the Periodic Table. Please excuse the former title on videos made in the past.