History of chemistry
An important breakthrough in making sense of the list of known chemical elements (as well as in understanding the internal structure of atoms) was Dmitri Mendeleev's development of the first modern periodic table, or the periodic classification of the elements. Mendeleev, a Russian chemist, felt that there was some type of order to the elements and he spent more than thirteen years of his life collecting data and assembling the concept, initially with the idea of resolving some of the disorder in the field for his students. Mendeleev found that, when all the known chemical elements were arranged in order of increasing atomic weight, the resulting table displayed a recurring pattern, or periodicity, of properties within groups of elements. Mendeleev's law allowed him to build up a systematic periodic table of all the 66 elements then known based on atomic mass, which he published in "Principles of Chemistry" in 1869. His first Periodic Table was compiled on the basis of arranging the elements in ascending order of atomic weight and grouping them by similarity of properties.
Periodic table
Following the discovery, in 1911, by Ernest Rutherford of the atomic nucleus, it was proposed that the integer count of the nuclear charge is identical to the sequential place of each element in the periodic table. In 1913, Henry Moseley using X-ray spectroscopy confirmed this proposal experimentally. Moseley determined the value of the nuclear charge of each element and showed that Mendeleev's ordering actually places the elements in sequential order by nuclear charge. Nuclear charge is identical to proton count and determines the value of the atomic number ("Z") of each element. Using atomic number gives a definitive, integer-based sequence for the elements. Moseley predicted, in 1913, that the only elements still missing between aluminium ("Z" = 13) and gold ("Z" = 79) were "Z" = 43, 61, 72, and 75, all of which were later discovered. The atomic number is the absolute definition of an element and gives a factual basis for the ordering of the periodic table. The periodic table is used to predict the properties of new synthetic elements before they are produced and studied.