Reception of Mendeleev s Periodic Law

Brush, S. 1996. "The Reception of Mendeleev s Periodic Law in America and Britain." Isis 87 595-628. 

Many articles have appeared on this issue, including S.J. Brush,The Reception of Mendeleev s Periodic Law in America and Britain, Isis, 87, 595-628,1996 R. Campbell,T. Vinci, Novel Confirmation, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 34, 315—341, 1983 P. Maher Prediction, Accommodation and the Logic of Discovery, in A. Fine,J. Leplin (eds.), PSA 1988, vol. 1, Philosophy of Science Association, East Lansing, MI, 1988, 273—285 J. Worrall Fresnel, Poisson and the White Spot The Role of Successful Prediction in the Acceptance of Scientific Theories, in D. Gooding, T. Pinch, S. Schaffer (eds.) The Uses of Experiment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 135—157 E.R. Scerri, J. Worrall, Prediction and the Periodic Table, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 32, 407-452,2001. 

The discovery of periodicity in the properties of the elements and its connection to their atomic weights is one of the most important advances in nineteenth-century chemistry. This chapter will consider the tables of John Newlands (1837-1898) and William Odling (1829-1921), which preceded that of Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907). Mendeleev s table was published in 1869, prior to his being aware of the UK precedents of his tabulation. The major portion of this chapter will extend the ideas advanced by Stephen Brush in The Reception of Mendeleev s Periodic Law in America and Britain but wiU restrict itself to the dissemination of the periodicity concept within the United Kingdom. Th is will be monitored by recording its appearances in textbooks and examination papers, and in a wider context, by extracting data from Google Books. 

On the influence of predictions vs. accommodations, see Brush The Reception of Mendeleev s Periodic Law (note 56). Though they offered significant support for the periodic law, the recently discovered elements were hardly described at aU in textbooks. 

Paper I was the first public announcement of one of the most important discoveries in nineteenth-century chemistry what would soon be called Mendeleev s periodic law. However, the paper did not draw immediate attention from the chemists at the meeting. While this muted response was similar to the initial reception of the periodic system in other countries, the reception of the periodic system in Russia was distinctive for various reasons. This paper will examine some of these factors first. 

See Stephen G. Brush, The Reception of Mendeleevs Periodic Law in America and Britain, Isis 87 (1996) 595-628, and Ludmilla Nekoval-Chikhaoui, Diffusion de la classification periodique de Mendeleiev en France entre 1869 et 1934 (PhD diss.. University of Paris, 1994). See also the chapter by Garcia Belmar and Bensaude-Vincent in this book. On the earlier circulation in Russia, see the chapter by Masanori Kaji and Nathan Brooks in this volume and his previous paper, Mendeleev s Discovery of the Periodic Law The Origin and the Reception, Foundations of Chemistry 5 (2003) 189-214. Many chapters in this book offer similar conclusions for other countries. 

M. Kaji, Mendeleev s Conception of the Chemical Elements and the Principles of Chemistry, Bulletin for the History of Chemistry, 27, 4—16,2002 M. Kaji, Mendeleev s Discovery of the Periodic Law The Origin and the Reception, Foundations of Chemistry, 5,189-214, 2003. Of course, many Russian scholars have conducted such surveys before Kaji, but I am not aware of any that have been translated into English. 

---