Final answer:
Dmitri Mendeleev created the modern periodic table in 1869, organizing elements by atomic mass and their properties. His predictions for undiscovered elements such as gallium eventually led to the acceptance of his table. The element mendelevium was named in his honor.
Step-by-step explanation:
The modern periodic table was created by the Russian chemist and teacher Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869. Mendeleev designed a table where elements were organized by atomic mass and their chemical and physical properties. This ingenious design not only accommodated all known elements at the time but also had spaces for then-undiscovered elements. Mendeleev's predictions for missing elements, such as scandium, gallium, germanium, and technetium, which he left gaps for in his table, were later found and matched his predictions. This led to the widespread acceptance of his periodic table over the one created by German chemist Julius Lothar Meyer, who was working on a similar table around the same time. Mendeleev's work demonstrated the periodic nature of the elements and set the foundation for modern chemistry.
Mendeleev's periodic table is considered superior because of his foresight in predicting the existence and properties of unknown elements at the time. An example of an element predicted by Mendeleev is gallium. Furthermore, the element mendelevium was later named after Mendeleev in honor of his contributions to chemistry.