On November 26, 1837 London, England was blessed with John Alexander Reina Newlands birth. No one had any idea what this young child would grow up to be. He was the second son of William Newlands who was a Presbyterian minister. John received his general education from his father. Then he went on to the Royal College of Chemistry in 1856 to study under A.W. Hoffman. Interestingly enough, Mary Sara Reina, who was John's mother, was of Italian descent. July 29th 1898 was a sad day for all who knew John Newlands because on this day he past away. Influenza is what drew him to death. He left behind his wife, daughter and son who were very heart broken by his unfortunate death. .
During Johns life he had many great accomplishments to be remembered for. In 1864, John set up a practice as an analytical chemist. On the side he taught chemistry to supplement his income. He became chief chemist in a refinery because he developed a new system of cleaning sugar and introduced a number of improvements in processing. This all happened in 1868. Unfortunately two years later, he left the refinery due to foreign competition and started another analyst practice, which was partnered by his brother. He really loved chemistry. .
There was something that always bugged John, which was the classification of organic compounds. This really attracted him to arrange the elements himself. He came to the conclusion that when ordered by increasing weight, every eighth element was related, or analogous, to the first element in the group. Elements came in multiples of eight. This conclusion of John's became known as the "Law of octaves." Strikingly enough, he also chose the serial order of atomic weights starting with Hydrogen. Over the years John Newlands kept trying to improve on his first breakthrough which was of course the first version of the periodic table. Persistently he never gave up setting out claims. This finally paid off when he was rewarded in 1887 with the Davy Medal of the Royal Society.
