Periodic table
Russian chemistry professor Dmitri Mendeleev and German chemist Julius Lothar Meyer independently published their periodic tables in 1869 and 1870, respectively. Mendeleev's table was his first published version; that of Meyer was an expanded version of his (Meyer's) table of 1864. They both constructed their tables by listing the elements in rows or columns in order of atomic weight and starting a new row or column when the characteristics of the elements began to repeat.
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.