Lothar Meyer

This volume presents the fundamental contributions of Lothar Meyer in connection with his discovery of the periodic table, which occurred almost simultaneously but independently of that by Dmitrij I. Mendeleev. The following texts have been selected for this purpose: The Modern Theories of Chemistry and Their Significance for Chemical Statics, 1st edition (1864), Annals of Chemistry and Pharmacy, VII. Supplement Volume (1870), and excerpts from the second edition of the work The Modern Theories of Chemistry and Their Significance for Chemical Statics (1872). Through these texts, the commentators illustrate Meyer’s path to the understanding of the periodicity of the properties of the elements and their arrangement in a table and in a graph. In the introductory commentary, they compile many details about Meyer’s biography, the physicochemical background, and changes in chemical theories during the 1860s and early 1870s.