History Of

ODERN PERIODIC
TABLE
 Famous Chemists Who Contributed To The Periodic Table

Antoine Lavoisier  Aristotle  Lothar Meyer

 Robert Boyle John

Jons Jacob Berzelius
Newlands  Dmitri Ivanovich
Mendeleev
Johann Dobereiner
 Hennig Brand  Lord Reyleigh
A. E. Beguyer de
Chancourtois Henry Moseley  William Ramsey

Glenn T. Seaborg
 ARISTOTLE
 384 BC- 32 BC
 Philosopher and scientist in ancient Greece

 FOUR ELEMENT THEORY OF ARISTOTLE

 Aristotle believed that matter is a mixture of four natural
elements : earth, water, fire and air.
 And these four natural elements are made of four properties :
clod, hot, wet and dry.
 It was a creative idea at that time.
 Four elements theory

Aristotle
Hennig Brand
German chemist
o (flourished 1670, Hamburg [Germany]),
o German chemist who, through his discovery of phosphorus,
o became the first known discoverer of an element.
o Brand kept his process a secret,
o phosphorus was discovered independently in 1680 by an English chemist, 
Robert Boyle.
o ROBERT Boyle
o philosopher
o Robert Boyle FRS was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and
inventor.
o Defined an element as a substance that cannot be broken down into simpler
substances by a chemical reactions
o provided the information for future scientists to discover and classify chemical
elements, which later came together to form the Periodic Table.
HENNIG BRAND[1649]

ROBERT BOYLE [1661]

 ANTOINE-LAURENT DE LAVOISIER
French chemist
• First person to classify elements into groups.
• In the year 1789, the known elements at that time were classified into
4 groups based on their chemical properties, gases, non-metals,metals
and earth.
• This classification by Lavoisier was unsuccessful because his table consisted
• of many wrong information.
• For eg: Light, Heat and a few compounds that were unable to decompose
• into elements were considered elements in his table.
 THE EARLY BLOCKS
• JONS JACOB BERZELIUS {Swedish chemist}
• August 20, 1779 – died on August 07, 1848
• Best known for his determination of atomic weights, chemical
notation, isolation
• And discovery of silicon, selenium, thorium and cerium periodic
table elements.
• Introduced letters to symbolize elements
• He is known as "the Father of Swedish Chemistry".
• JOHANN DOBEREINER {German chemist}
• 13 Dec 1780 - 24 Mar 1849 ·
• Classified elements into triads each of 3 elements with similar
• chemical properties.
• The relative atomic mass of the middle element was approximately equal to the average atomic
mass of the other 2 elements.
 Drawbacks of Dobereiner’s Triads
•Dobereiner could identify only three triads.
•He was not able to prepare triads of all the known elements.
•All the known elements could not be arranged in the form of triads.
•For very low mass or for very high mass elements, the law was not
Jons Jacob Barzelius holding good.
•For example F, Cl, Br. TRIADS

Johann Dobereiner
 Alexandre Emile Beguyer de Chancourtois
• January 20, 1820 – November 14, 1886.
• first to arrange the chemical elements in order of atomic weights.
• He devised an early form of periodic table, which he called the telluric helix 
• plotted the atomic weights on the surface of a cylinder with a circumference
of 16 units, the approximate atomic weight of oxygen.
• he suggested that "the properties of the elements are the properties of numbers.
• He was the first scientist to see the periodicity of elements when they
were arranged in order of their atomic weights.

De Chancourtois's Periodic table

 JOHN NEWLANDS
British Chemist
 26 November 1837 – 29 July 1898

 LAW OF OCTAVES [1865]

  if the chemical elements are arranged according to increasing atomic
weight, those with similar physical and chemical properties occur after
each interval of seven elements like the musical notes do, re, me, ect .
Newland called this repetition as the law of octaves.
  Examples : The eight element from lithium is sodium. ... Similarly, eight
element from sodium is potassium.

 DRAWBACKS
 Newland could arrange elements only up to calcium. After calcium, every eighth
element did not possess properties similar to that of the first.
 Only 56 elements were known at the time of Newlands, but later several
elements were discovered
 One important demerit of Newlands' law that he adjusted two elements in the
same slot such as Cobalt and nickel [ Co and Ni ]
NEWLAND’S PERIODIC TABLE

LAW OF OCTAVES

JOHN NEWLANDS
 LOTHAR MEYER
German Chemist
•  Meyer is best known for his part in
the periodic classification of the elements.
• He noted, as J. A. R. Newlands did inEngland,
• if each element is arranged in the order oftheir atomic
weights, they fall into groupof similar chemical and
physical propertiesrepeated at periodic intervals.
 Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907)
Russian Chemist & Professor

• 8 February 1834 - 2 February 1907

• Importance of Mendeleev’s Periodic Table
•  Systematic Study of the elements
• Mendeleev’s periodic table was developed in accordance to-
(a) increasing atomic masses.
(b) grouping of similar elements together.
•  Prediction of new elements and their properties
• In Mendeleev’s periodic table, some vacant spaces were left with strong
prediction for their discovery later on.
•  Accommodation of Nobel gases
• Nobel gases were discovered later and were added in a new group
called zero group which was not present in original Mendeleev’s
periodic table. So, that original periodic table was not disturbed.
•  Correction of doubtful atomic masses
• Mendeleev’s periodic table helped in correction of atomic weights of
certain elements such as Beryllium (Be, group IIA) , gold (Au, group IB)
and platinum (Pt, group VIII),  based on their position in periodic
table.
MENDELEEV’S PERIODIC TABLE
 LATER INCLUSIONS
JOHN (LORD RAYLEIGH) STRUTT
• Strutt's best-known work, and one for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in
physics in 1904, was his unexpected discovery of the first rare inert gas argon.
• This was his greatest single contribution to science which is the discovery and
isolation of argon, one of the rare gases of the atmosphere.
WILLIAM RAMSEY
• William Ramsay's discoveries added an entirely new family of
chemical elements to the periodic table – the noble gases.
• He predicted the existence of this family of gases and either
discovered or was first to isolate every member of the group.
•  Ramsay was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
for his work.
 Inert gases or noble gases were
included in the
Periodic table in 1902 WILLIAM RAMSEY

ORD RAYLEIGH
 LATER INCLUSIONS
• Henry Moseley,(Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley)
• November 23, 1887— August 10, 1915
• English physicist who experimentally
demonstrated that the major properties of an
element are determined by the atomic number,
not by the atomic weight.
• He firmly established the relationship between
atomic number and the charge of the atomic
nucleus.
 LATER
INCLUSIONS
GLENN T SEABORG
[American chemist]
 April 19, 1912 – February 25, 1999
 With his colleagues at the University of California
at Berkeley, Glenn
Seaborg discovered the element plutonium in late
1940.
 He went on to identify several more of the
radioactive “transuranium” elements
so named for their position following uranium in
the periodic table and received
a Nobel Prize in 1951.
 LATER INCLUSIONS
• Seaborg was the principal or co
-discoverer of ten elements: plutonium,
americium, curium, berkelium,
californium, einsteinium, fermium,
mendelevium, nobelium

• An element 106, which, while he was

still living, was named seaborgium in
his honor.
 CONCLUSION
oThe periodic table is one of the most important achievements in
the field of chemistry.
oIt is full of patterns that enable us to better understand the world
around us.
oWithout it, we would not have many of the products and medicine
that we have today.
o The information gained from the periodic table can
open up numerous windows of knowledge about the
entire universe we live in.