How the two-dimensional structure of Sanskrit could have led to the creation of the periodic table.
It is an amusing fact that the original names used by Mendeleev for gallium and germanium are eka-aluminum and eka-silicon, where the eka, Sanskrit for one, has the sense of beyond. The prediction for the existence of these elements was made by Mendeleev in a paper in 1869, and it was the identification of these elements in 1875 and 1886 that made him famous, and led to the general acceptance of the periodic table. In all, Mendeleev gave Sanskrit names to eight elements in his periodic table. Here we speak of how the two-dimensional structure of Sanskrit led him to his momentous discovery.
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