, Lambeth|alt=Newlands' birthplace in West Square, Southwark.|left|227x227pxNewlands was born in
London in England, at
West Square in
Southwark, the son of a Scottish
Presbyterian minister and his Italian wife. Newlands was
home-schooled by his father, and later studied at the
Royal College of Chemistry, now part of
Imperial College London. He was interested in social reform and during 1860 served as a volunteer with
Giuseppe Garibaldi in his military campaign to unify Italy. Returning to London, Newlands established himself as an
analytical chemist in 1864. In 1868 he became chief chemist of James Duncan's London
sugar refinery, where he introduced a number of improvements in processing. Later he quit the refinery and again became an analyst with his brother, Benjamin. Newlands was the first person to devise a periodic table of
chemical elements arranged in order of their relative
atomic masses published in
Chemical News in February 1863. Continuing
Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner's work with
triads and
Jean-Baptiste Dumas' families of similar elements, he published in 1865 his "
Law of Octaves", which stated that "any given element will exhibit analogous behaviour to the eighth element following it in the table." Newlands arranged all of the known elements, starting with
hydrogen and ending with
thorium (atomic weight 232), into eight groups of seven, which he likened to
octaves of music. In Newlands' table, the elements were ordered by the atomic weights that were known at the time and were numbered sequentially to show their order.
Groups were shown going across the table, with
periods going down – the opposite from the modern form of the periodic table. The incompleteness of the table alluded to the possible existence of additional, undiscovered elements. However, the Law of Octaves was ridiculed by some of Newlands' contemporaries, and the Society of Chemists did not accept his work for publication. After
Dmitri Mendeleev and
Lothar Meyer received the
Davy Medal from the
Royal Society for their later 'discovery' of the periodic table in 1882, Newlands fought for recognition of his earlier work and eventually received the Davy Medal in 1887. John Newlands died due to complications of surgery at his home in
Lower Clapton, Middlesex and was buried at
West Norwood Cemetery. His businesses were continued after his death by his younger brother, Benjamin. == Works ==