Dimitri Mendeleev: The Periodic Table Of Elements In Chemistry

The Periodic table of elements is an extremely important and useful scientific tool, mostly in the area of chemistry, but also in many other scientific areas. It has been around for hundreds of years and over time has been continuously added to and develop by many different scientists. The Periodic table contains over 100 elements, each one with varying physical and chemical properties. The Periodic table has not been simply one person creating and discovering all the elements, it has been the combined work of many different scientists. Although, Dimitri Mendeleev is often considered the creator or even father of the Periodic system.
The first theory to do with the atom was by Democritus and Leucippus who first proposed the idea of the atom as an invisible particle that all matter is made of. However, the first real discovery of an element, besides those like Gold and Silver etc. (which people had been aware of before written history) was phosphorus, which was discovered by Henning Brand in 1649. In 1787, a French chemist called Antoine Lavoisier, made a list of all 33 known elements of the time. Between 1649 and 1869, the Periodic table was added to and in 1869 a total of 63 elements had been discovered. In 1864, John Newlands made a huge advancement in the arranging of these elements, as he was able to sort them in order of atomic weights and was also able to observe similar properties between elements. The creation of the Periodic table, however is considered to be done by Russian scientist Dimitri Mendeleev who proposed a table as a classification system for all of the elements that had been discovered and he even left spaces for elements that had not yet been discovered, but he predicted they would. The Periodic table contin...

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...h looking back on it today it might not look like he achieved much in terms publishing a list of only five elements (1803) in comparison to the one hundred and twelve elements we know today. However, at the time it would have been huge, because of the fact that at that time people would have known very little about these elements, also because he was also able to even include their atomic numbers. Dalton also published a second list of elements in 1808, this time there was 20 elements, along with their atomic masses and some combinations of elements. This was an improvement on his first list, but still had quite inaccurate atomic masses and was still a fair way off the 112 elements that we know today. However, this list was improved upon once again in his second volume that was published in 1827 that included 36 elements again along with symbols and atomic masses.