John Newlands was an English chemist best known for his work in the development of the periodic table. He proposed the Law of Octaves in 1865, which suggested that elements exhibit similar properties every eight elements when arranged by increasing atomic weight. This was an early attempt to organize the known elements based on their chemical behavior. Newlands' contributions were significant in the field of chemistry, although his ideas were initially met with skepticism. His work laid the groundwork for later scientists, including Dmitri Mendeleev, who further refined the periodic table, leading to the modern understanding of elemental organization.