Julius Lothar Meyer trivia | 40 facts about the famous chemist

Julius Lothar Meyer is a famous chemist with huge achievements on his expertise.

Many people don’t know many things about him. So, let’s dive into the life of Julius Lothar Meyer, and find out more things about him!

1. Julius Lothar von Meyer was born in 19th August 1830.
2. Lothar Meyer was born in Varel, Germany.
3. He was the son of Friedrich August Meyer, and Anna Biermann.
4. Both of his parents were doctors.
5. After attending the Altes Gymnasium in Oldenburg, he studied medicine at the University of Zurich in 1851.
6. Two years later, he studied at the University of Würzburg, where he studied pathology, as a student of Rudolf Virchow.
7. At Zurich, his studies under Carl Ludwig prompted him to devote his attention to physiological chemistry.
8. After graduating as a Doctor of Medicine from Würzburg in 1854, he went to the University of Heidelberg.
9. In the the University of Heidelberg he met Robert Bunsen held the chair of chemistry.
10. In 1858, he received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Breslau.
11. His thesis was about the effects of carbon monoxide on the blood.
12. He was interested in the physiology of respiration.
13. This how he had recognized that oxygen combines with the hemoglobin in blood.
14. He was strognly influenced by the mathematical teaching of Gustav Kirchhoff.
15. This is why he took up the study of mathematical physics at the University of Königsberg under Franz Ernst Neumann.
16. In 1859, after having received his habilitation (certification for university teaching), became Privatdozent in physics and chemistry at the University of Breslau.
17. In 1866, Meyer accepted a post at the Eberswalde Forestry Academy at Neustadt-Eberswalde.
18. The same year Meyer married Johanna Volkmann.
19. Two years later he was appointed to a professorship at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic.
20. Google honors famous scientists, artists etc by creating a google doodle.
21. Julius Lothar Meyer was depicted in a Google Doodle on Wednesday, 19th August 2020.
22. He was a German chemist.
23. He was one of the pioneers in developing the first periodic table of chemical elements.
24. Both Mendeleev and Meyer worked with Robert Bunsen.
25. He never used his first given name, and was known throughout his life simply as Lothar Meyer.
26. In 1872, Meyer was the first to suggest that the six carbon atoms in the benzene ring were interconnected by single bonds only, the fourth valence of each carbon atom being directed toward the interior of the ring.
27. The same thing had been proposed a few years earlier by August Kekulé.
28. During the Franco-Prussian War, the Polytechnic was used as a hospital and Meyer took an active role in the care of the wounded.
29. In 1876, Meyer became Professor of Chemistry at the University of Tübingen.
30. He served at the University of Tübingen until his death.
31. He died from on April 11, 1895 at the age of 64.
32. The cause of his death was a stroke.
33. Meyer is best known for his part in the periodic classification of the elements.
34. He noted, as J. A. R. Newlands did in England, if each element is arranged in the order of their atomic weights, they fall into groups of similar chemical and physical properties repeated at periodic intervals.
35. According to him, if the atomic weights were plotted as ordinates and the atomic volumes as abscissae, the curve obtained a series of maxima and minima with the most electro-positive elements appearing at the peaks of the curve in the order of their atomic weights.
36. He wrote one of most important bookes name Die modernen Theorien der Chemie, which he began writing in Breslau in 1862. The book was published in 1964, and it was really important for the science of chemistry.
37. In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev published a periodic table of all elements known at that time, and a few months later, Meyer published a paper that included a revised version of his 1864 table that now included virtually all of the known elements, which was similar to the table published by Mendeleev.
38. Meyer had developed his fuller periodic table independently, but he acknowledged Mendeleev’s priority. Included in Meyer’s paper was a line chart of atomic volumes as a function of atomic weights, showing graphically the periodicity of the elements.
39. Both Mendeleev and Meyer included predictions of future elements, but Mendeleev did not emphasize these predictions nor suggest details of the physical and chemical properties of the future elements.
40. In 1882, both Meyer and Mendeleev received the Davy Medal from the Royal Society in recognition of their work on the Periodic Law.