Meyer’s periodic table

What helped make Mendeleev s system seem more plausible was the coincidental publication of Lothar Meyer s periodic table. Meyer had attended the 1860 Karlsruhe conference just as Mendeleev had, and, like Mendeleev, he had gone away convinced that there was some pattern that united the elements through atomic weights. He had sketched out an incomplete table of elements in his book Die modernen Theorien der Chemie (1864), and in 1868 he worked out a much more complete table. He did not publish this until 1870, by which time he was fully aware of Mendeleev s work. In addition to providing independent confirmation of Mendeleev s system, Meyer also added a supporting observation, showing that there was a periodic relationship between atomic number and atomic volume. Atomic volume represents the volume occupied by one mole of an element in its solid state. Meyer showed that atomic volume equaled atomic weight divided by the density of the solid. 

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