The Periodic Table

8,000 BCE O.S. – Dec 201685 items

chemistryscience
One of Dmitri Mendeleev's hand-drawn drafts of the periodic table, on display in his apartment at St Petersburg University. Photo: Scotted400, 2017. CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
One of Dmitri Mendeleev's hand-drawn drafts of the periodic table, on display in his apartment at St Petersburg University. Photo: Scotted400, 2017. CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

From seven metals to 118 elements

Seven metals were known in antiquity. By 2016 the table had 118 elements and a full seventh row. This timeline follows how each one was found: hammered from nuggets, boiled out of urine, split off with a battery, read from a spectrum, or made one atom at a time in an accelerator. Alongside the discoveries run the ideas that turned a list into a table, from Boyle and Lavoisier to Mendeleev, Moseley and Seaborg.

How to read it

  • Periods mark the eras: pneumatic chemistry, the long unpicking of the Ytterby earths, the radioactive decades, and the Berkeley–Dubna–Darmstadt race with the naming wars it set off.

  • Tags follow one way of finding elements: metals of antiquity, gases, electrolysis, rare earths, spectroscopy, noble gases, radioactivity and synthetic elements. classification follows the table itself, prediction the gaps Mendeleev and others forecast, and controversy the priority fights.

  • The map puts each discovery at its lab or find-spot, from Anatolia and Ytterby to Heidelberg, Berkeley, Dubna, Darmstadt and Wako.

Discovery, isolation and credit

An element can be “discovered” several times: detected in a spectrum, shown to exist in a compound, isolated as the pure substance, and finally credited by a committee. Each note says which of these its date marks. Ancient metals carry wide ranges, because nobody recorded who first smelted them.

Two calendars in St Petersburg

Russia kept the Julian calendar until 1918, so Mendeleev dated his table 17 February 1869, a day the rest of Europe called 1 March. The two St Petersburg items are entered in the Julian calendar as he wrote them; the timeline places them on the Gregorian day.

“…if we apply the term elements, or principles of bodies, to express our idea of the last point which analysis is capable of reaching, we must admit, as elements, all the substances into which we are capable, by any means, to reduce bodies by decomposition.” — Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry (1789; Kerr's translation, 1790)

Items

  1. Copper, hammered from native nuggets

    Çayönü Tepesi, near Ergani

  2. Lead, the easiest metal to smelt

    Çatalhöyük, Konya Plain

  3. 1,500 years

  4. The gold of Varna

    Varna Necropolis

  5. Silver, won by cupellation

  6. Iron from the sky: the Gerzeh beads

    Gerzeh cemetery, Egypt

  7. Tin, the other half of bronze

  8. ≈ 2,185 years

  9. Theophrastus's recipe for quicksilver

  10. 1,604 years

  11. Zinc distilled at Zawar

    Zawar mines, Rajasthan

  12. Boyle's The Sceptical Chymist

  13. Hennig Brand's phosphorus

    Hamburg

  14. Georg Brandt's cobalt

    Stockholm

  15. Ulloa describes platina

    Chocó, New Granada (now Colombia)

  16. Cronstedt's nickel

    Stockholm

  17. Pneumatic chemistry

    ≈ 35 years

  18. Cavendish's “inflammable air”

    London

  19. Scheele's “fire air”

    Uppsala

  20. Daniel Rutherford's “noxious air”

    University of Edinburgh

  21. Scheele's chlorine

    Uppsala

  22. Priestley's “dephlogisticated air”

    Bowood House, Wiltshire

  23. Lavoisier names oxygen

    Petit Arsenal, Paris

  24. The Elhuyar brothers' tungsten

    Royal Seminary, Bergara

  25. Unpicking the Ytterby earths

    ≈ 120 years · Ytterby mine, Resarö

  26. Lavoisier's list of 33 elements

  27. Klaproth's uranium

    Berlin

  28. Gadolin's yttria

    Royal Academy of Turku (Åbo)

  29. Dalton's first table of atomic weights

    Literary and Philosophical Society, George Street

  30. Davy isolates potassium

    Royal Institution, Albemarle Street

  31. Davy's four alkaline earth metals

    Royal Institution, Albemarle Street

  32. Courtois's violet vapour: iodine

    Paris

  33. Berzelius's letter symbols

  34. Arfwedson's lithium

    Stockholm

  35. Ørsted's aluminium

    University of Copenhagen

  36. Döbereiner's triads

    University of Jena

  37. Mosander's lanthanum, erbium and terbium

    Stockholm

  38. Bunsen and Kirchhoff's caesium

    Bunsen's laboratory, Heidelberg

  39. The Karlsruhe Congress

    2 days · Ständehaus, Karlsruhe

  40. Newlands's law of octaves

    Burlington House, Piccadilly

  41. A yellow line in the Sun: helium

    Guntur, India

  42. Mendeleev's periodic table

    St Petersburg University, Twelve Collegia

  43. Menshutkin reads the table to the Russian Chemical Society

    St Petersburg University, Twelve Collegia

  44. Mendeleev predicts three missing elements

  45. Lecoq de Boisbaudran's gallium

    Cognac

  46. Marignac's ytterbia

    Geneva

  47. Nilson's scandium: eka-boron

    Uppsala

  48. Cleve's holmium and thulium

    Uppsala

  49. Winkler's germanium: eka-silicon

    Bergakademie Freiberg

  50. Moissan frees fluorine

    École supérieure de pharmacie, Paris

  51. Rayleigh and Ramsay announce argon

    Oxford

  52. Ramsay finds helium on Earth

    University College London

  53. The radioactive decades

    ≈ 43 years

  54. Ramsay and Travers distil liquid air

    1 month, 13 days · University College London

  55. The Curies announce polonium

    École de physique et chimie, rue Lhomond, Paris

  56. The Curies and Bémont announce radium

    École de physique et chimie, rue Lhomond, Paris

  57. Rutherford and Owens's “emanation”: radon

    Macdonald Physics Building, McGill University

  58. Urbain's lutetium

    Sorbonne, Paris

  59. Moseley's atomic numbers

    Schuster Laboratory, University of Manchester

  60. Hahn and Meitner's protactinium

    Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, Dahlem

  61. Coster and Hevesy's hafnium

    Institute for Theoretical Physics, Blegdamsvej

  62. Perrier and Segrè's technetium

    Physics institute, Via Archirafi, Palermo

  63. Marguerite Perey's francium

    Institut du Radium, Paris

  64. McMillan and Abelson's neptunium

    Radiation Laboratory, Berkeley

  65. Plutonium identified in Gilman Hall

    Gilman Hall, Berkeley

  66. Seaborg's actinide concept

    Metallurgical Laboratory, University of Chicago

  67. Americium and curium

    Metallurgical Laboratory, University of Chicago

  68. Promethium from fission products

    Clinton Laboratories (X-10), Oak Ridge

  69. Ivy Mike: einsteinium and fermium

    Elugelab, Enewetak Atoll

  70. Mendelevium, one atom at a time

    Radiation Laboratory, Berkeley

  71. The Berkeley–Dubna–Darmstadt race

    ≈ 40 years

  72. Nobelium: claimed in Stockholm, credited to Dubna

    Nobel Institute of Physics, Stockholm

  73. Element 104: kurchatovium or rutherfordium?

    Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, Dubna

  74. Element 106, later seaborgium

    Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

  75. One atom of meitnerium

    GSI, Wixhausen, Darmstadt

  76. The transfermium wars

    ≈ 12 years

  77. The Transfermium Working Group's verdict

  78. Darmstadtium and roentgenium

    GSI, Wixhausen, Darmstadt

  79. Copernicium

    GSI, Wixhausen, Darmstadt

  80. IUPAC settles the names of 104–109

    Geneva

  81. Hot fusion completes the seventh row

    ≈ 11 years, 6 months

  82. Flerovium

    Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, Dubna

  83. Berkeley's elements 116 and 118 that never were

    Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

  84. Oganesson: the first atom

    Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, Dubna

  85. Nihonium: RIKEN's first atom

    RIKEN Nishina Center, Wako

  86. Tennessine

    Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, Dubna

  87. The seventh row is complete

  88. IUPAC names 113, 115, 117 and 118