Who Invented the Periodic Table – The periodic table was invented in 1869 by the Russian scientist Dmitry Mendeleev who worked at the University of Saint Petersburg.
This chemist created a table to classify and distribute chemical elements according to their properties and peculiarities. Previously, other scientists were already trying to order the elements they knew, but until that moment very few had been discovered, so little information was available.
History of the Periodic Table
- Only in 1789 Antoine Lavoisier managed to publish a list of 33 chemical elements which he divided into gases, metals, non-metals, earth.
- This table was rejected by the scientific world because it was not accurate as there were contradictions in both the physical and chemical properties.
- In 1862 a geologist named Chancourtois developed a form of the periodic table that he called the telluric helix.
- He noted the cycle of the elements and arranged them in a spiral on a cylinder in progressive order of atomic weight.
- This scientist showed that the elements had similar qualities at regular intervals.
- Ions and compounds were added to this table.
- This table was not well known to the scientific world, but it is considered one of the first attempts to carry out this type of arrangement of the chemical elements.
In 1864 the chemist of German origin published a table containing 44 elements that were ordered by valence. This arrangement arose because elements with similar properties shared valence. Soon after an English chemist named Odling added a few more elements to the table, reaching 57, and ordered them according to their atomic weight. In 1870, the German-born scientist Julius Lothar Meyer designed another version of the periodic table of elements, which was different from Mendeleev’s. Both scientists classified elements based on atomic number.
The two tables had some criticism from the rest of the scientific world so changes had to be made to the originals, to improve them. At this time only 60 natural elements were known, much less than exist, and then it was increased to 90 elements. Mendeleev’s periodic table has been the basis for the current table of elements.
This table was expanded and renewed by the discoveries of new chemical elements, which determined changes in the location of the elements with respect to the original. One of the best qualities of Mendeleev’s table is that it left blank spaces for elements that had not yet been discovered by science. One of the virtues of this scientist is that he was able to predict trends in the properties of the missing elements.
The other characteristic that caused the periodic table to be valued was ordering the elements by atomic weight and not by atomic number. He also managed to classify the elements into families or chemical groups. This table was not evaluated until the presence and properties of protons and neutrons were known. In 1871, Mendeleev published a new table with some changes to the previous ones. Since he placed the groups of similar elements in columns, instead of rows numbered from I to VIII, he also has a correlation with respect to the oxidation state of each element.
In the new version of the table, one more group was added to the existing ones, such as noble gases, this happened in 1904. Decades later, rare earth and radioactive elements were integrated into the periodic table. The modern periodic table The current version of the periodic table that we use today was created by Nobel laureate in chemistry Alfred Werner.
In the modern periodic table of elements, 118 elements appear, of which 94 elements are natural and the rest were synthesized in laboratories. These elements have atomic numbers from 95 to 118. 95 to 100 are elements that existed at some point on earth but are not present in nature today. The chemical elements are located in the table according to their chemical number or number of protons, by their arrangement of electrons and their chemical qualities. Items that have a similar behavior are placed in the same column.
The periodic table could not be developed previously because there were not enough elements discovered.
It took two centuries to know a good amount of chemical elements as well as to understand their properties. Research is ongoing to find new elements.
The periodic table is very useful to carry out different scientific studies.
The periodic table continues to change due to the discovery of new elements, which is why during 2015 elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 were recognized, which are placed in the seventh row of the table.
Scientific names are yet to be enunciated and assigned as symbols that distinguish them from others. So these new elements will be incorporated into the periodic table and will be liked even more.
The names of the new elements and the symbols that represent them are designated by consensus regardless of what the discoverer of the same prefers. The current periodic table is used by scientists and children in schools.
Its criterion for ordering the elements is to place them in groups with similar electronic distributions, the same valence, that is, the number of electrons it has.
This was the best ordering that was achieved since the creation of the first element table. The periodic table is a very useful tool to learn about chemistry since it gives the basis to begin to understand this subject. It is used for simple and complex chemistry works as it provides fundamental data to develop different products or techniques that are useful for society as a whole.
This table will surely continue to evolve, as long as new chemical elements are discovered, whether natural or synthesized in the laboratory. This shows that there is much to learn and discover in the field of chemistry and that is why research continues to find more elements that are not yet known.
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