periodictable
Extensible periodic table of the elements
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes. Periodictable is a stable, actively maintained reference library with low install friction and no known vulnerabilities. It fills a clear niche for scientists needing programmatic access to element data and scattering calculations. The permissive licensing and public-domain status remove legal friction. Install it if you work with crystallography, neutron science, or X-ray analysis and need element properties in code.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Requires Python 3.10 or later.
- Low friction install with stable, active maintenance.
- Last release 167 days ago, repository actively maintained with recent commits.
License · maintenance · safety
permissive license (permissive) — Public domain with permissive licensing on individual files. No restrictions on use, modification, or distribution for most of the codebase.
last release 2026-02-28 (167 days) · last repo commit 2026-06-05 · 172 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 166,218 downloads/mo, #10,504 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install periodictable
import periodictable
element = periodictable.H
print(element.mass, element.density)- Whether tabulated values match specific crystallography standards or if differences from International Tables for Crystallography are documented.
- Accuracy and completeness of neutron activation estimates for health physics applications.
What it is and what it does
Periodictable is a reference library that wraps element data into an extensible periodic table, enabling programmatic access to atomic properties and scattering calculations. It combines neutron scattering data from the Atomic Institute of the Austrian Universities, X-ray data from the LBL Center for X-ray Optics, and neutron activation estimates based on health-physics literature. The package is designed for scientists and engineers working in crystallography, materials science, and neutron/X-ray analysis who need to look up or compute element-dependent properties in code rather than consulting tables manually.
The library depends on pyparsing and numpy for parsing and numerical operations. It is actively maintained, in production-stable status, and has been in development since 2010. The codebase is public domain with permissive licensing on individual modules, making it suitable for both academic and commercial use.
Use it for
- Look up atomic mass, density, and other element properties in crystallography or materials analysis workflows.
- Calculate neutron scattering cross-sections for sample composition analysis in neutron diffraction experiments.
- Compute X-ray scattering factors for structure refinement or X-ray diffraction modeling.
- Estimate neutron activation levels for samples in research beams for health physics assessment.
- Build element-aware data processing pipelines in scientific computing applications.
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes.
Periodictable is a stable, actively maintained reference library with low install friction and no known vulnerabilities. It fills a clear niche for scientists needing programmatic access to element data and scattering calculations. The permissive licensing and public-domain status remove legal friction. Install it if you work with crystallography, neutron science, or X-ray analysis and need element properties in code.
Install
periodictable on PyPI
Before you install
Low friction install with stable, active maintenance. Last release 167 days ago, repository actively maintained with recent commits. Depends only on pyparsing and numpy, both widely-used libraries.
Requires Python 3.10 or later.
License in practice
Public domain with permissive licensing on individual files. No restrictions on use, modification, or distribution for most of the codebase.
Quickstart
pip install periodictable
import periodictable
element = periodictable.H
print(element.mass, element.density)Verify before relying
- Whether tabulated values match specific crystallography standards or if differences from International Tables for Crystallography are documented.
- Accuracy and completeness of neutron activation estimates for health physics applications.
Package facts
| License | permissive license permissive |
| Python support | Supports the current Python release >=3.10 |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 2 packagespyparsingnumpy |
| Maintenance | Actively maintained 167 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 166,218 / month, #10,504 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableEnvironment :: ConsoleIntended Audience :: Science/ResearchLicense :: Public DomainOperating System :: OS IndependentProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Topic :: Scientific/Engineering :: ChemistryTopic :: Scientific/Engineering :: Physics |
Evidence: periodictable-2.1.0-py3-none-any.whl
Tags
Let your AI agent find packages like this
Example. Real query, live index.
You found this page by searching. An agent finds it by wishing: SkillFed indexes 14,416 PyPI packages by what they can do, searchable in plain language.
wish › “neutron scattering calculations”
- periodictableProvides a periodic table of the elements with computed properties…
- xraydbXrayDB provides a Python interface to a SQLite database of X-ray…
- neutron-libNeutron-lib provides shared routines, utilities, and common…
Give your agent the search over MCP, or paste the wish link into any chat.
More Physics packages
NetworkX provides data structures and algorithms for creating, analyzing, and manipulating graphs and networks, supporting everything from simple undirected graphs to complex directed and weighted networks.
SymPy is a Python library for symbolic mathematics, performing algebraic manipulation, calculus, equation solving, and mathematical expression simplification without numerical approximation.
Pydicom reads, modifies, and writes DICOM medical imaging files in pure Python, with optional NumPy support for pixel data as arrays.
Install it if you work with medical imaging data, DICOM files, or healthcare IT systems.
Albumentations applies image transformations to training data, supporting classification, segmentation, object detection, and pose estimation with a unified API for images, masks, bounding boxes, and keypoints.
Install it if you need a unified, production-grade augmentation API for computer vision tasks.
CoolProp provides thermodynamic and transport property calculations for fluids and fluid mixtures, offering open-source functionality similar to REFPROP.
Provides quaternion representation, manipulation, and rotation operations for 3D geometry and animation, with support for smooth interpolation between orientations.
See also mendeleev · xraydb · pyxtal · vasprun-xml · thermo · symfc · gemmi · vesin · neutron-lib · vesin-torch