Consider the following statement: “Atomic number of an element is a more fundamental property than its atomic mass.” Who among the following scientists has made the above statement?
Dmitri Mendeleev
Henry Moseley
J.J. Thomson
Ernest Rutherford
Answer is Right!
Answer is Wrong!
This question was previously asked in
UPSC CDS-2 – 2019
Dmitri Mendeleev developed the periodic table based on atomic mass, but he noted that some elements needed to be placed out of order by mass to fit their chemical properties into the correct groups. Henry Moseley’s work provided the physical basis for this ordering, showing that the frequency of characteristic X-rays emitted by an element is related to its atomic number (the number of protons in the nucleus), which is a more fundamental property determining chemical behaviour than atomic mass.