• Question: who invented the periodic table?

    Asked by to Edward on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Edward Hughes

      Edward Hughes answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Most people would say it was a Russian scientist called Mendeleev in 1869. But chemists had been producing similar tables for 70 years before Mendeleev’s one came out!

      So why is Mendeleev the famous guy then? Well, he was clever because his table left gaps where he thought there were missing elements. Looking at the nearby elements in his table, he could predict the properties of the missing ones. These were later discovered, and fitted (almost) perfectly into his table!

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