Lothar Meyer

This volume presents the fundamental contributions of Lothar Meyer in connection with his discovery of the periodic table, which took place almost simultaneously but independently of that of Dmitrij I. Mendeleev. The following texts were selected for this purpose: The Modern Theories of Chemistry and their Significance for Chemical Statics. 1st edition (1864), Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie, VII supplementary volume (1870) and excerpts from the second edition of the work Die modernen Theorien der Chemie und ihre Bedeutung f&uuml,r die chemische Statik (1872). On the basis of these texts, the commentators show Meyer's path to understanding the periodicity of the properties of the elements and their arrangement in a table and in a graph. In the introductory commentary, in addition to Meyer's biography, they compile many details on the physicochemical background and on changes in the chemical theories of the 1860s and the early 1870s.