William Odling facts for kids
William Odling (born September 5, 1829, died February 17, 1921) was an English chemist. He was born in Southwark, London, and passed away in Oxford. Odling is best known for his important work on the periodic table. This is a chart that organizes all known chemical elements.
In the 1860s, many chemists were trying to sort out the chemical elements. Odling was one of them. He was very interested in how elements could be grouped. He looked at their atomic weight and how their properties repeated.
Odling and another chemist, Lothar Meyer, created their own tables. These tables were similar to, and even improved upon, Dmitri Mendeleev's first periodic table. Odling's table arranged elements in groups of seven. It looked a lot like Mendeleev's early version.
In Odling's table, elements were listed by increasing atomic weight. There were also empty spaces for elements that had not yet been found. Odling even solved some tricky problems with element placement. For example, he correctly placed elements like thallium, lead, mercury, and platinum. Mendeleev had trouble with these in his first attempt.
However, Odling did not always get the credit he deserved. Some people believe he played a part in making it hard for John Alexander Reina Newlands to publish his own periodic table. Odling also suggested an important idea about carbon in 1855. He proposed that carbon could form a structure similar to methane. August Kekulé later made a similar suggestion. He then proposed that carbon could connect to four other atoms.
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Odling's Career
William Odling had a long and successful career in chemistry.
Early Teaching Roles
In 1850, Odling started teaching chemistry. He became a lecturer at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School. He also worked as a demonstrator at Guy's Hospital Medical School.
Royal Institution
Odling left St Bartholomew's in 1868. He then became a professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution. This is a famous place for science in London. While there, he gave two special lectures for Christmas. These were called The Chemical Changes of Carbon (1868) and Burning and Unburning (1870).
Professor at Oxford
In 1872, Odling moved to the University of Oxford. He became the Waynflete Professor of Chemistry. He was also a fellow at Worcester College. He stayed in this role until he retired in 1912.
Leadership Roles
Odling was also very active in scientific societies. He served as a leader in the Chemical Society of London. He was its Honorary Secretary, Vice-President, and President. He also held important positions in the Institute of Chemistry.
In 1859, he became a member of the Royal Society of London. This is a very old and respected scientific group. In 1875, he received an honorary PhD from Leiden University in the Netherlands.
See also
