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Lothar Meyer
Life Details
Born: August 19th, 1830. Died: April 11th, 1895.
Introduction
Lothar Meyer was a German chemist who originally was a teacher of sciences, including chemistry and physics. He is noted to be one of several scientists that formed their own periodic table.
Early Life & Education
Lothar Meyer was born in Varel, Germany to parents Friedrich August Meyer and Anna Biermann. He studied medicine at the University of Zurich in 1851. He devoted his attention to physiological chemistry, and in 1853 he went to the University of Würzburg, studying pathology. He also studied at the University of Heidelberg (the same university as Mendeleev, and almost at the same time) in 1854. He then studied at Königsberg. He studied mathematical physics here until 1858. By this point, he had recognised that oxygen combines with hemoglobin in blood.
Work entailed, and in 1859 he became Privatdozent in physics and chemistry at the University of Breslau. During his time in Breslau, he independently came up with his own theory on the periodic law and table of elements. He noted that if each element is arranged in the order of their atomic weights, they fall into groups of similiar chemical and physical properties repeated at periodic intervals.
Dmitri Mendeleev
Meyer's book, Die modernen Theorien der Chemie, was published in 1864, and contained an early version of the periodic table, containing 28 elements, classed in six different families by their valence. It became a successful book, and was translated into English, French and Russian and had five editions.
During 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev published his periodic table of all known elements, and a few months later, Meyer published a revised edition of his 1864 table independently. It was similar to Mendeleev's and a paper showing graphically the periodicity of elements as a function of atomic weight. At first, Meyer disputed that Mendeleev's version was incorrect due to the atomic weights having been changed, but Mendeleev's was later accepted widely among chemists.
In 1882, both Meyer and Mendeleev received the Davy Medal from the Royal Society in recognition for their work on Periodic Law.
Later Life & Death
His later life was consumed by chemistry. He became Professor of Chemistry at the University of Tübingen in 1876, where he served until his death at the age of 65 in 1895.
