Julius Lothar Meyer: Google doodle on first periodic table’s developer on his 190th birthday

Happy Birthday Julius Lothar Meyer!!!

Google today celebrates the 190^th birthday of Julius Lothar Meyer with a beautiful doodle. He was one of the pioneers in developing the first periodic table of chemical elements. He was a German chemist, professor and also an author.

Both Julius Lothar Meyer and Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev worked with Robert Bunsen. He never used his first given name, and was known throughout his life simply as Lothar Meyer.

Julius Lothar Meyer was born into a medical family in Germany’s Varel on August 19, 1830. He was the son of Friedrich August Meyer, a physician, and Anna Biermann. After attending the Altes Gymnasium in Oldenburg, he studied medicine at the University of Zurich in 1851. Two years later, he studied at the University of Würzburg, where he studied pathology, as a student of Rudolf Virchow. He earned his doctorate in 1858 and began his career as a science teacher the very next year.

Gustav Kirchhoff’s mathematical teaching influenced Julius Lothar Meyer a lot. He took up the study of mathematical physics at the University of Königsberg under Franz Ernst Neumann, and in 1859, after having received his habilitation (certification for university teaching), he became Privatdozent in physics and chemistry at the University of Breslau. He accepted a post at the Eberswalde Forestry Academy at Neustadt-Eberswalde in 1866. But in 1888, he was appointed to a professorship at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic.

Many may not know that Julius Lothar Meyer was the first to suggest that the six carbon atoms in the benzene ring were interconnected by single bonds only, the fourth valence of each carbon atom being directed toward the interior of the ring. His claim was earlier proposed by August Kekulé.

Lothar Meyer designed a more comprehensive table in 1868, but before he could publish, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev released his own paper that placed all the known elements in one table and cemented his place in science history. 1869, he published a paper that included a revised version of his 1864 table that now included virtually all of the known elements, which was similar to the table published by Mendeleev. He had developed his fuller periodic table independently, but he acknowledged Mendeleev's priority.

Both Lothar Meyer and Mendeleev received the Davy Medal from the Royal Society in recognition of their work on the Periodic Law. In 1876, Meyer became Professor of Chemistry at the University of Tübingen. He died at the age of 65 on April 11, 1895. Google today pays tribute to the great German chemist for becoming one of the pioneers in developing the first periodic table of chemical elements.

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