B - Atomic number. Dmitri Mendeleev organised the table according to atomic weight, however this caused problems with elements such as iodine and tellurium, Iodine has a higher mass, but a lower atomic number. And to make iodine in the same group as similar elements (halogens), Mendeleev had to break his own rules and put it before tellurium in the table. Moseley fixed this problem by ordering the elements according to atomic (proton) number.