English chemist who in 1863 proposed the Law of Octaves which stated that chemical properties repeated with every eighth element. Because Newlands's use of a musical analogy in a chemical theory sounded like a regression to Pythagorean mysticism, the theory was ridiculed. The physicist George Foster went so far as to derisively ask if Newlands might not obtain equally good results by arranging the elements alphabetically. It was not until Mendeléev published his periodic table that Newlands' law was shown to have a great deal of truth to it.

Mendeléev