History of the periodic table the Periodic Law for the chemical elements". He contributed the word 'periodic' in chemistry. The Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev was the first scientist to make a periodic table similar to the one used today. Mendeleev arranged the elements by atomic mass, corresponding to relative molar mass. It is sometimes said that he played 'chemical solitaire' on long train journeys, using cards with various facts about the known elements. On March 6, 1869, Mendeleev gave a formal presentation, "The Dependence Between the Properties of the Atomic Weights of the Elements", to the Russian Chemical Society. In 1869, the table was published
Periodic table rather than in rows, and those columns numbered I to VIII corresponding with the element's oxidation state. He also gave detailed predictions for the properties of elements he had earlier noted were missing, but should exist. These gaps were subsequently filled as chemists discovered additional naturally occurring elements. It is often stated that the last naturally occurring element to be discovered was francium (referred to by Mendeleev as "eka-caesium") in 1939. Plutonium, produced synthetically in 1940, was identified in trace quantities as a naturally occurring element in 1971. The popular periodic table layout, also known as the common or standard