Happy Birthday to You, Periodic Table!

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This year, the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements celebrates its 150th birthday.

Source: This NPR Article.

In March, it will be 150 years since the Russian scientist, Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907), took all of the known elements and arranged them into a table.

Mendeleev created his early periodic table in 1869. He took the 63 known elements and arranged them into a table, mainly by their atomic mass.

Although he wasn't the first to do this, his interpretation involved a leap of ingenuity, in that he put those with similar properties below each other into groups and left gaps for new elements to be slotted in.

Most of his ideas have stood the test of time, despite being conceived long before we knew much about the stuff that makes up matter.