2012/01/01 by Michael D. Gordin · 1 citation
Chemistry · Mathematics · #Art #Art history #Certainty #Classics #Epistemology #German #History #History and advancements in chemistry #Linguistics #Literature #Mathematics #Periodic system #Philosophy #Various Chemistry Research Topics
paper · doi:10.1057/9780230338029_4
openalex publication_date 2012/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
I have no idea who discovered the periodic system of chemical elements, and I am going to tell you why. When you open a chemistry textbook today, you can often find, next to its periodic table, a sidebar with a grizzled bearded man who is depicted as “the discoverer” of the periodic law, the formula-tor of the table whose checkered countenance greets you from the wall of every chemistry laboratory in the world. Almost always, that bearded man is Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834–1907), a chemist from St. Petersburg who published his version of this system in 1869—or maybe in 1871, depending on how you figure it. Sometimes he shares the space with the grizzled beard of Julius Lothar Meyer (1830–1895), who published his version in 1864, or 1868, 1 or 1870. 2 A hundred years ago, German textbooks might simply have presented Meyer, and some esoteric texts would have also depicted John Newlands, or Gustav Hinrichs, or one or two others—grizzled beards all. The textbooks are endowed with a certainty I do not have; they know what the periodic table is , and therefore they know who discovered it first. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.