John (Alexander Reina) Newlands

Chemist, born in London, UK. He worked in a sugar refinery at the Victoria Docks, London. He was the first to arrange the elements in order of atomic number and to see the connection between every eighth. This ‘law of octaves’ brought him ridicule at the time (1864), but it was the first idea of a periodic law, and in 1887 the Royal Society awarded him its Davy Medal in recognition of his work.

John Alexander Reina Newlands (November 26, 1838 – July 29, 1898) was an English analytical chemist who prepared in 1863 the first periodic table of the elements arranged in order of relative atomic masses, and pointed out in 1865 the 'law of octaves' whereby every eighth element has similar properties. He was ridiculed at the time, but five years later Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published — independent of Newlands' work — a more developed form of the table, also based on atomic masses, which forms the basis of the one used today (arranged by atomic number).

Like many of his contemporaries, Newlands first used the terms 'equivalent weight' and 'atomic weight' without any distinction in meaning, and in his first paper in 1863 he used the values accepted by his predecessors.

In 1894, Newlands had a child by the name of Christoper Maddocks Newlands.

There is a blue plaque on the house where Newlands was born and raised in West Square, Newington, south London, installed by the Royal Society of Chemistry.