History of the periodic table managed to get thallium, lead, mercury and platinum into the right groups, which is something that Mendeleev failed to do at his first attempt. Odling failed to achieve recognition, however, since it is suspected that he, as Secretary of the Chemical Society of London, was instrumental in discrediting Newlands' earlier work on the periodic table. By 1912 almost 50 different radioactive elements had been found, too many for the periodic table. Frederick Soddy in 1913 found that although they emitted different radiation, many elements were alike in their chemical characteristics so shared the same place on the table. They became
History of the periodic table were "earth", "water", "air" and "fire". Similar ideas about these four elements also existed in other ancient traditions, such as Indian philosophy. The history of the periodic table is also a history of the discovery of the chemical elements. The first person in history to discover a new element was Hennig Brand, a bankrupt German merchant. Brand tried to discover the Philosopher's Stone — a mythical object that was supposed to turn inexpensive base metals into gold. In 1669 (or later), his experiments with distilled human urine resulted in the production of a glowing white substance, which he called "cold