William Odling

William Odling, FRS (5 September 1829 in Southwark, London – 17 February 1921 in Oxford) was an English chemist who contributed to the development of the periodic table.

In addition, Odling overcame the tellurium-iodine problem and he even managed to get thallium, lead, mercury and platinum in the right groups - something that Mendeleev failed to do at his first attempt.

that he, as Secretary of the Chemical Society of London, was instrumental in discrediting John Alexander Reina Newlands' efforts at getting his own periodic table published.

August Kekulé made a similar suggestion in 1857, then in a subsequent paper later that same year proposed that carbon is a tetravalent element.

In 1872 he left the Royal Institution and became Waynflete Professor of Chemistry and a fellow of Worcester College, Oxford, where he stayed still his retirement in 1912.