Julius Lothar Meyer

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Julius Lothar von Meyer
Julius Lothar von Meyer
Born	August 19, 1830 Varel
Died	April 11, 1895 (aged 65) Tübingen
Fields	Chemistry
Institutions	University of Tübingen
Known for	Periodic table of chemical elements
Influences	Robert Bunsen

Julius Lothar von Meyer (August 19, 1830 – April 11, 1895) was a German chemist. He was contemporary and competitor of Dimitri Mendeleev to draw up the first periodic table of chemical elements. Some five years apart, both Mendeleev and Meyer worked with Robert Bunsen.

Career

He was born in Varel, at that time belonging to the Duchy of Oldenburg, now part of Germany. He is the son of Friedrich August Meyer, a physician, and Anna Biermann. After high school (Altes Gymnasium Oldenburg AGO) he went to study medicine first at Zürich University in 1851. Then, two years later, he studied at the University of Würzburg. This was where he had Rudolf Virchow as his teacher in pathology. The influence of C. F. W. Ludwig, under whom he studied at Zürich, decided him to devote his attention to physiological chemistry. Therefore, after his graduation (1854), he went to Heidelberg, where R. Bunsen held the chair of chemistry. There he was so influenced by G. R. Kirchhoff's mathematical teaching that he took up the study of mathematical physics at Königsberg under F. E. Neumann. In 1859, he became privat-docent in physics and chemistry at Breslau. In the preceding year, he had graduated as Ph.D. with a thesis on the action of carbon monoxide on the blood.^[1] In 1866 he accepted a post at the Eberswalde Forestry Academy at Neustadt-Eberswalde, but soon moved to Carlsruhe Polytechnic.^[2] He married Johanna Volkmann on August 16, 1866.^{[citation needed]}

Meyer's contributions also included the concept that the carbon atoms in benzene were arranged in a ring, although he did not propose the alternation of single and double bonds that later became included in the structure by August Kekulé.

During the Franco-German campaign, the Polytechnic was used as a hospital, and he took an active part in the care of the wounded. In 1876, Meyer became the first Professor of Chemistry at the University of Tübingen, where he served until his death.^[2]

Periodic table

Meyer is best known for the share he had in the periodic classification of the elements. He noted, as did J. A. R. Newlands in England, that if they are arranged in the order of their atomic weights they fall into groups in which similar chemical and physical properties are repeated at periodic intervals; and in particular he showed that if the atomic weights are plotted as ordinates and the atomic volumes as abscissae, the curve obtained presents a series of maxima and minima, the most electro-positive elements appearing at the peaks of the curve in the order of their atomic weights.^[2]

His book on Die modernen Theorien der Chemie, which was first published in Breslau in 1862 (The Internet Database of Periodic Tables. Hemogenesis web book) and 1864, has an early version of the periodic table containing 28 elements classified into six families by their valence — the first time that elements had been grouped and ordered according to their valence. Work on organizing the elements by atomic weight had hitherto been stymied by inaccurate measurements of the atomic weights.

Julius Lothar Meyer was the first to build the periodic table of elements. There are obtained evidence of the priority of a German doctor, a chemist and physicist Julius Lothar von Meyer in the development of the Periodic Table. He has published articles on his classification table of the elements in a horizontal form (1862, 1864) and vertical form (1870), where the series of periods are properly terminated by an element of the earth metal group (Makeyev A.K. Julius Lothar Meyer was first which built the periodic table of elements. // Eropean applied sciences, April, 2013, 4 (2) - pp. 49–61).

Mendeleev published his periodic table of all known elements (and predicted several new elements to complete the table, plus some corrected atomic weights) in 1869. Working completely independently, a few months later, Meyer published a revised and expanded version of his 1864 table, virtually identical to that published by Mendeleev (Meyer had been sent a copy of Mendeleev's table earlier, Mendeleev sent it to all well known chemists of those times) and a paper showing graphically the periodicity of the elements as a function of atomic weight. As well as other chemists, Meyer was doubtful about Mendeleev's periodic law, and he criticized Mendeleev for 'changing existing elements' atomic weights, only regarding possibility of periodical law in its structure', but Mendeleev's work provided significant support, particularly when the new elements were found as predicted and remeasured atomic weights accorded with those predicted.

In 1882, Meyer received from the Royal Society, at the same time as Mendeleev, the Davy Medal in recognition of his work on the Periodic Law.

Meyer table with a horizontal display of periods in 1864

	Valence IV	Valence III	Valence II	Valence I	Valence I	Valence II	The mass difference
I line					Li	Be	~16
II line	C	N	O	F	Na	Mg	~16
III line	Si	P	S	Cl	K	Ca	~45
IV line		As	Se	Br	Rb	Sr	~45
V line	Sn	Sb	Te	I	Cs	Ba	~90
VI line	Pb	Bi			Tl		~90

Meyer table with vertical display of periods in 1870

I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII	VIII	IX
	B	Al				In(?)		Tl
	C	Si	Ti		Zr	Sn		Pb
	N	P	V	As	Nb	Sb	Ta	Bi
	O	S	Cr	Se	Mo	Те	W
	F	Cl	Mn Fe Co Ni	Br	Ru Rh Pd	I	Os Ir Pt
Li	Na	K	Cu	Rb	Ag	Cs	Au
Be	Mg	Ca	Zn	Sr	Cd	Ba	Hg

Notes

↑ With this interest in the physiology of respiration, he had recognized that oxygen combines with the hemoglobin in blood.^{[citation needed]}
↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press

References

Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Meyer, Julius Lothar". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press
Seubert, Karl (1918). "Nekrolog: Lothar Meyer". Berichte der deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft 28 (4): 1109–1146. doi:10.1002/cber.18950280498.
Makeyev A.K. Julius Lothar Meyer was first which built the periodic table of elements // European applied sciences, № 4 2013, (April) volume 2. - pp. 49-61. ISSN 2195-2183

External links

Authority control	WorldCat VIAF: 64048998 LCCN: n90631830 ISNI: 0000 0000 8344 1821 GND: 118733419 NDL: 00768956

Persondata
Name	Meyer, Lothar
Alternative names	Julius Lothar Meyer
Short description	German chemist
Date of birth	August 19, 1830
Place of birth	Varel
Date of death	April 11, 1895
Place of death	Tübingen

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