Mendeleev - GCSE Chemistry Definition

Dmitri Mendeleev was a Russian chemist who created the first widely accepted Periodic Table of Elements in 1869. He arranged the elements in order of increasing atomic weight and grouped elements with similar properties into columns.

Mendeleev's table was important because:

• He left gaps for elements that had not yet been discovered

• He was able to predict the properties of those missing elements

• His work helped scientists understand patterns and relationships between elements

Although the modern Periodic Table is now arranged by atomic number instead of atomic weight, Mendeleev’s ideas laid the foundation for the version we use today in GCSE Chemistry.