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.
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
Among some astronomers, the book "at once took its place as a worthy successor to the "Almagest" of Ptolemy, which had hitherto been the Alpha and Omega of astronomers". Erasmus Reinhold hailed the work in 1542 and by 1551 had developed the "Prutenic Tables" ("Prussian Tables"; ; ) using Copernicus' methods. The "Prutenic Tables", published in 1551, were used as a basis for the calendar reform instituted in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. They were also used by sailors and maritime explorers, whose 15th-century predecessors had used Regiomontanus' "Table of the Stars". In England, Robert Recorde, John Dee, Thomas Digges and William Gilbert were among those who adopted his position; in Germany, Christian Wurstisen, Christoph Rothmann and Michael Mästlin, the teacher of Johannes Kepler; in Italy, Giambattista Benedetti and Giordano Bruno whilst Franciscus Patricius accepted the rotation of the Earth. In Spain, rules published in 1561 for the curriculum of the University of Salamanca gave students the choice between studying Ptolemy or Copernicus. One of those students, Diego de Zúñiga, published an acceptance of Copernican theory in 1584.