Julius Lothar (von) Meyer (1830-1895) and the Periodic System

Abstract

The logo of the “International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements” (IYPT) shows only Dmitri I. Mendeleev (1834-1907) and none of the other scholars who were closely related with the discovery of the classification of elements. As early as 1864 the German physical chemist Lothar Meyer used a table to explain the “peculiar regularities” that were found among the atomic weights; by the end of that decade he had considered more elements and improved the system. Among other discoverers of the periodicity, Meyer and his colleague Karl Seubert (1851-1942) determined and recalculated atomic weights. This essay depicts the biography of Lothar Meyer and evaluates his contributions to the development of a classifi-cation system for chemical elements in several steps, to the periodic arrangement of elements. Finally, Meyer's opinion of the use of the periodic tables in teaching and organizing the material in courses on inorganic chemistry is presented.