The first table of simple chemical substances was presented in 1789 by the french chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) in his book 'Traité Élémentaire de Chimie '. Complex bodies are made from elements and can be reduced to those elements through chemical analysis. Without going into the nature and number of elements, Boyle defined each element as a simple substance, a building block from which more complex things are made. This was done in 1661 by the 'father of modern chemistry ', English-Irish chemist and naturalist Robert Boyle (1627-1691), in his book 'The Sceptical Chymist'. It took almost 2000 years for someone to seriously attack Aristotle's theory of the four elements and the somewhat more contemporary three alchemical principles (mercury, sulphur, and salt). The only thing kept from the Greek idea of element was that each element has characteristic properties. This appeared to be quite reasonable since burnt wood decomposed into three elements: water, air, and earth. A hundred years later Aristotle (384-322) embraced his idea and added that, each of the four elements has four basic properties: hot, cold, dry, and wet. Empedocles (490-430) believed that all matter was made up of four elements: air, earth, fire, and water, and that by mixing those elements in various ratios one could create every substance found in nature. Tales believed that this element was water, his student Anaximander thought it was air, and Heraclites speculated it was fire. The old Greek philosophers Tales (624-546), Anaximander (610-546), and Heraclites (540-480) claimed that all matter was made up of one fundamental principle - or element. Aristotle's elements and their properties → Download high quality image

Periodic table chemistry 201