The principle that the physical and chemical properties of elements are a periodic function of their proton number. The concept was first proposed in 1869 by Dmitri Mendeleev, using relative atomic mass rather than proton number, as a culmination of efforts to rationalize chemical properties by Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner (1829), John Alexander Reina Newlands (1863), and Lothar Meyer (1864). One of the major successes of the periodic law was its ability to predict chemical and physical properties of undiscovered elements and unknown compounds that were later confirmed experimentally.