William Odling

William Odling, FRS (5 September 1829 in Southwark, London – 17 February 1921 in Oxford) was an English chemist who contributed to the development of the periodic table.^[1]

In the 1860s Odling, like many chemists, was working towards classifying the elements, an effort that would eventually lead to the

and there are vacant slots for undiscovered ones. In addition, Odling overcame the tellurium-iodine problem and he even managed to get thallium, lead, mercury and platinum in the right groups - something that Mendeleev failed to do at his first attempt.

Odling failed to achieve recognition, however, since it is suspected^[

made a similar suggestion in 1857, then in a subsequent paper later that same year proposed that carbon is a tetravalent element.

Career

Odling became a Chemistry Lecturer at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School and a Demonstrator at Guy's Hospital Medical School in 1850. Leaving St Bartholomew's in 1868 he became a Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution where in 1868 and 1870 he was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Chemical Changes of Carbon and Burning and Unburning respectively.

In 1872 he left the Royal Institution and became

Waynflete Professor of Chemistry and a fellow of Worcester College, Oxford

, where he stayed still his retirement in 1912.

Odling also served as a fellow (1848–1856), Honorary Secretary (1856–1869), Vice-President (1869–1872) and President (1873–1875) of the

Institute of Chemistry

.

In 1859 he was made a fellow of the

Royal Society of London and in 1875 he was granted an honorary PhD by Leiden University

, the Netherlands.

See also

Wikisource has original works by or about:
William Odling

• History of the periodic table

References

1. ^ Carmen J. Giunta, Vera V. Mainz, and Julianna Poole-Sawyer (2020), "Periodicity in Britain: The Periodic Tables of Odling and Newlands" in 150 Years of the Periodic Table, Springer, pp. 93-131.

• Fullerian Professorships