Carnelley, Thomas

An account of the periodic law was given in 1876 by H. E. Armstrong and from about 1884 appeared in several English text-books. Thomas Carnelley extended the periodicity of physical properties to compounds. Wyrouboff, who did important research on isomorphism, said Mendeleeff s selection of the typical oxides (see top of table on p. 896) is arbitrary sometimes the lower oxide is selected (CugO), sometimes the higher (Mn207). 

Clear support for periodicity came from Dundee Professor Thomas Carnelley (1852-1890), speaking at the British Association (BA) Aberdeen meeting. He started with, The truth of the Periodic Law, as enunciated by Newlands, Mendelejeflf and Lothar Meyer is now generally allowed by most chemists. Nevertheless but little has been done towards attaining a reasonable explanation of the Law. ... 

To return to Thomsen, in a memoir of 1894 published by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, he offered a detailed examination of the atomic weights and their significance. His purpose was to establish that they, if only properly interpreted, revealed that the so-called atoms of our elements have evolved out of combination of particles of a common basic substance. He did not on this occasion discuss the relation to the periodic system, but this is what he did the following year, in a paper in which he proposed a new classification of the elements (Figure 8.1). From a formal point of view, Thomsen s innovation was merely to reverse periods and groups, which was not entirely original since versions of this kind had been proposed earlier, first by Thomas Bayley in 1882 and again by Carnelley in 1886. ° However, in 1894 Thomsen was unaware of these two systems, such as he stated in a letter to the American chemist Francis Venable (1856-1934), who in a book of 1896 described Thomsen s system in some detail. ... 

Thomsen, Om Materiens Enhed (note 21), 22. Thomas Carnelley, Suggestions as to the Cause of the Periodic Law and the Nature of the Chemical Elements, Chemical News 53 (1886) 169-172. 

Thomas Bayley, On the Connexion between the Atomic Weight and the Chemical and Physical Properties of Elements, Philosophical Magazine 13 (1882) 26-37. Carnelley, Suggestions (note 24). 

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