2026-10-06 link.springer.com: Lente (2019), ChemTexts 5:17

URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40828-019-0092-5 (open access, CC BY 4.0). PDF saved: research/files/Lente-2019-ChemTexts-Where-Mendeleev-was-wrong.pdf (11 pp.). Found through the Google query Mendeleev ether "newtonium" coronium zero series 1902.

Content relevant to the claims [web]

• Gábor Lente (University of Pécs), "Where Mendeleev was wrong: predicted elements that have never been found". A secondary source by a mainstream chemist. It counts more than half of Mendeleev's predicted elements as never found, and traces most failures to the rare earths.
• Reconstruction of Mendeleev's method (claims 2 and 3). Lente argues that y <= 0.4 comes from the ratios 6.97, 4.98, 3.28, 2.67 forming a near-geometric series with factor about 1.4; the log-plot intercept is about 9.5, which Mendeleev rounded to "at least 10". For x = 0.17 he shows that the ratios fit a second-order parabola exactly. He supports this with the German translation's phrase "aus einer Parabel zweiter Ordnung" (from a second-order parabola), which the English lacks. He proposes that Mendeleev did a tabular finite-difference extrapolation (Table 4 of the article), which gives exactly 23.6. This is Lente's reconstruction, not Mendeleev's stated procedure.
• Motive. Lente argues that Mendeleev's opposition to Prout's hypothesis (all elements built from hydrogen) was "a serious, but apparently highly personal reason" for proposing elements lighter than hydrogen.
• Michelson-Morley (1887) is described as "now understood to disprove the concept". The article also records that Einstein (1922) spoke of relativity as a kind of ether, and that Dirac wrote "Is there an Aether?" (Nature 168:906, 1951). These are related later work (priority 3).
• References to follow:
• Mendelejew, "Versuch einer chemischen Auffassung des Weltäthers", Prometheus 15:129-134 (1903), and Naturwiss. Rundschau 19:289-291 (1904).
• B. Bensaude-Vincent, "L'éther, élément chimique: un essai malheureux de Mendéléev?", Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 15:183-188 (1982).
• J. W. van Spronsen, "Mendeleev as a speculator", J. Chem. Educ. 58:790-791 (1981).
• Kovács, Csupor, Lente and Gunda, 100 Chemical Myths (Springer 2014).

Bears on

Claims 2, 3 and 6. It offers a worked reconstruction of the x and y extrapolations that the mathematician can check numerically. It is the mainstream author's characterization of the ether essay as an unsuccessful prediction.