The first chemist of note to grasp the significance of Mendeléeff’s generalisation was Lothar Meyer, who, dealing at the outset with one of the characteristic properties of the elements—viz., their specific or atomic volumes (that is, the values obtained by dividing their specific gravities into their respective atomic weights)—greatly developed the principle of periodicity, representing it graphically in a most striking and suggestive manner, leading up to a classification almost identical with that of Mendeléeff.
Since the date of its promulgation the scheme of classification of the elements in accordance with the principle of periodicity has experienced certain minor modifications necessitated by fuller knowledge; but in its essential features it remains very much in the form devised by Mendeléeff. The discovery of the so-called inert and radio-active elements required that their relations to the periodic law should be defined. Their inclusion raises no fundamental difficulty. Indeed, the generalisation seems to adapt itself to the far-reaching considerations which spring from modern views of the nature of the atom, its electro-chemical relationships, and the orderly arrangement of the corpuscles of which it may be composed. In the 1905 edition of the English translation of his famous _Principles of Chemistry_, Mendeléeff has given a table which may be said to embody his final views concerning the systematic classification of the elements. This is reproduced on p. 105. In this table he postulates the existence of two hypothetical elements, _x_ and _y_, the former of which he regards as identical with the physical ether; while the latter is an analogue of helium, possibly identical with the “coronium” of the solar coronal atmosphere, with a molecular weight of about 0.4.
The striking feature of Mendeléeff’s generalisation is its universality. In this respect it differs from all previous attempts at natural classifications of the elements; these were limited and partial, and therefore unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, it is easy to trace in them fundamental conceptions upon which Mendeléeff built. Mendeléeff, in fact, gave a great extension to ideas with which the chemical world of half a century ago was more or less familiar; and doubtless it was this circumstance, combined with the remarkable boldness and comprehensiveness of this extension, followed almost immediately by a most striking series of confirmations of his own previsions, as logical consequences of his generalisation, that secured for it attention, and ultimately universal adoption.