The periodic table of chemical elements is one of the greatest efforts made to systematize the properties of the substances that make up our universe. It is well known that its invention is due to the Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeléiev but, very possibly, the decisive work carried out by the English analytical chemist is not well known John Newlands (1837-1898).
Newlands was a singular man, after studying at the Royal College of Chemistry he enlisted as a volunteer in the armies of Giuseppe Garibaldi in his Italian unification campaign. The reason for that call to arms was none other than Italian blood ran through her veins through her mother.
Once the war ended, he returned to his native England, established himself as a chemist and worked for some time in a sugar refinery, where he made some notable improvements, later establishing himself as an analytical chemist.
The passion for music
Newlands, like other great scientists of the stature of Alexander Borodin, Albert Einstein o Georg Cantor, had a special inclination for the universe of the eighth notes, round and triple notes. It was precisely this passion that led him to organize the chemical elements in a different way, with a somewhat musical approach.
The Anglo-Italian scientist was the first to design a periodic table of the chemical elements arranged in order of their relative atomic mass. In 1863 he organized the fifty-six elements known at the time into eleven groups, based on similar physical properties. He did it starting with hydrogen and ending with thorium.
He observed that the eighth element resembled the first, the ninth the second, the tenth the third… For example, sodium with atomic number 11 and potassium with atomic number 19 had similar properties and were separated by eight atomic numbers. This “periodicity” suggested to Newlands the existence of a certain musical harmony.
For this reason, when in 1864 he published his work on the chemical elements, he baptized it as the Law of Octaves. With it, he also formed the following triples of elements: hydrogen-fluorine-chlorine, lithium-sodium-potassium, beryllium-magnesium-calcium, boron-aluminum-chromium, carbon-silicon-titanium, nitrogen-phosphorus-manganese and oxygen- silicon-iron.
The truth is that his proposal did not have, not even remotely, the recognition that Newlands hoped to achieve, moreover, he was attacked from all sides and even ridiculed. There were many scientists who considered that this crazy idea lacked any scientific rigor.
Despite its inaccuracies, which there were, for example, iron does not belong to the oxygen-silicon group nor chromium to boron-aluminum, the Law of Octaves served as inspiration for the one that Mendeleyev would later develop.
Mendeleev was also a music lover
It is known that the Russian scientist Mendeleyev showed a greater inclination towards literature and painting than towards music, despite the fact that we know that at his house he organized musical evenings in which the compositions of Beethoven They occupied a prominent place.
On the other hand, he shared work for a time in the German city of Heidelberg with Alexander Borodinthe quintessential chemist and composer, and one of his colleagues in St. Petersburg was the engineer Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich, whose son Dmitri would become one of the great composers of the 20th century. And it is that sometimes the great stories overshadow the most insignificant details.