Julius Lothar Meyer
In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev published a periodic table of all known elements (he predicted several new elements to complete the table, and corrected some atomic weights). A few months later, Meyer published a revised and expanded version of his 1864 table independently, which was similar to that published by Mendeleev (Meyer had been sent a copy of Mendeleev's table earlier; Mendeleev had sent it to many well-known chemists of his day) and a paper showing graphically the periodicity of the elements as a function of atomic weight. Meyer, as well as other chemists, was doubtful about Mendeleev's periodic law, and he criticized Mendeleev for "changing existing elements' atomic weights, only regarding possibility of periodical law in its structure". However, Mendeleev's work received significant support, when the new elements were found as predicted and atomic weights accordingly.
Thorium
In the periodic table published by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, thorium and the rare-earth elements were placed outside the main body of the table, at the end of each vertical period after the alkaline earth metals. This reflected the belief at that time that thorium and the rare-earth metals were divalent. With the later recognition that the rare earths were mostly trivalent and thorium was tetravalent, Mendeleev moved cerium and thorium to group IV in 1871, which also contained the modern carbon group (group 14) and titanium group (group 4), because their maximum oxidation state was +4. Cerium was soon removed from the main body of the table and placed in a separate lanthanide series; thorium was left with group 4 as it had similar properties to its supposed lighter congeners in that group, such as titanium and zirconium.