History of Periodic Table--Nemo Jin

Long time ago, a group of people believed that they could turn metals into pure gold. These people were called alchemists. Although they were not successful, many different elements were discovered by these alchemists, including gold, silver, tin, copper, lead and mercury. However, the first scientific discovery of an element was in 1649, the discovery of phosphorous by Hennig Brand.

In the next 200 years, a total of 63 elements had been discovered, and scientists began to recognize patterns in properties and began to develop classification schemes.


In 1863, John Newlands, a English chemist divided 56 elements into 11 groups, based on their characteristics. He also proposed the Law of Octaves,which stated that any given element will exhibit analogous behavior to the eighth element following it in the table.

                                             (John Newlands' Periodic Table)

(Meyer's 1864 textbook included a rather abbreviated version of a periodic table used to classify the elements, but unfortunately for Meyer, Mendeleev's table was the first one available to the scientific community)


      “Father of Periodic Table"
In 1869, Russian chemist Dimitri Mendeleev arranged chemical elements by their atomic masses.  He also accurately predicted the properties of some undiscovered elements, leaving spaces open in his periodic table for them. His contribution to the development of periodic table was usually considered as the foundation of modern periodic table. 

In 1894, Sir William Ramsay and Lord Rayleigh discovered the noble gases which did not fit any of the known periodic groups. Because of the zero valency of the elements, noble gases were added to the periodic table as group 0

In 1911, A. van den Broek proposed that the atomic weight of an element was approximately equal to the charge on an atom. This charge, later termed the atomic number, could be used to number the elements within the periodic table.

The last major changes to the periodic table was in the middle of the 20th Century.


Glenn Seaborg 
--discovery of elements from 94 to 102 
--rearrangement of the periodic table (placing the actinide series below the lanthanide series) 
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work. Element 106 has been named seaborgium (Sg) in his honor.