X

Google Doodle celebrates 190th birthday of periodic table pioneer Julius Lothar Meyer

His work contributed to our understanding of the periodic relationship of the elements.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
Expertise I have more than 30 years' experience in journalism in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
Steven Musil
2 min read
google-doodle-meyer-2020

Google celebrates the 190th birthday of German chemist Lothar Meyer.

Google

If you ever had to memorize the periodic table of chemical elements, the name Lothar Meyer may be familiar to you.

For it was Meyer, a German chemist, professor and author, who was one of two scientists to pioneer the earliest periodic tables and discover the periodic law of chemical elements. To celebrate his contribution to science, Google dedicated its Doodle on Wednesday to Meyer on his 190th birthday.

Born Julius Lothar Meyer in Varel, Germany, in 1830, Meyer initially followed in his father's footsteps, studying medicine. But after a few years of study, he shifted his focus to chemistry and began teaching science.

In 1864, Meyer published Die modernen Theorien der Chemis (Modern Chemical Theory), which contained an early version of the periodic table containing 28 elements classified for the first time into six families based on their atomic weight.

At the same time that Meyer was working on his table, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev was formulating his own periodic table, which featured an arrangement he said came to him in a dream. Meyer's initial pattern arranged the elements in horizontal form, but before he could publish a revision in vertical form in 1870, Mendeleev published a periodic table in 1869 that included all the elements known at the time and corrected some atomic weights. 

A few months later, Meyer published his revision, which included a line chart showing the relationship between atomic volume and atomic weight and the periodic relationship of the elements. Meyer's chart is depicted on the chalkboard of Wednesday's Doodle.

Though Meyer developed his revision independently, he acknowledged Mendeleev's priority.

In recognition of their work on periodic law, both Meyer and Mendeleev were awarded the Davy Medal by the Royal Society in 1882.

Our Favorite Google Doodles Through the Years

See all photos