The periodic table as we know it today is not a work of a single individual. Many brilliant men have devoted their time and energy to its design and completion.
In 1789, Antoine Lavoisier, a French chemist, published a table with 33 elements known at that time. However, the breakthrough came when two distinguished scientists, Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemistry professor, and Julius Lothar Meyer, a German chemist, independently published their periodic tables in 1869 and 1870 respectively. Mendeleev’s periodic table gained more popularity than Meyer’s, and gradually, his table was recognized and widely used by the scientific community world over.
Mendeleev’s achievement has an interesting anecdote associated with it. It is said that the idea of periodic table occurred to him in a dream! He was dreaming about a card game of Patience. Horace Groves Deming is credited for the popular layout of the periodic table we have today.
The periodic table lists and arranges elements in the order of their atomic number. There are rows and columns in it. The vertical column in the table is known as a group, while the horizontal row is called a period. These groups are assigned numbers, and some of these groups have accepted names. For example, elements of group 17 are known as halogens; and number 18 is the group of noble gases.
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