Гений России

Dmitri Mendeleev

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, the youngest of fourteen children, was born in Tobolsk, Siberia, on 7th February, 1834. His father died when Dmitri was quite young and his mother ran a glass-making factory to support her large familiy. By the age of fourteen, it was clear that Mendeleev had an aptitude for science. His mother tried to make sure that he received a decent education. However, her plans were halted when the glass factory was destroyed by fire. Eventually, Mendeleev was admitted to university I St Petersburg. He was happy there, until yet another setback threatened to prevent him from reaching his potential. He fell seriously ill and forced to stay at home in bed for days, sometimes weeks. He was only able to complete his degree through the help of his teachers and fellow students who would visit him often with books to read and papers to write. In 1856, Mendeleev was awarded his degree, and he soon completed his doctorate and was awarded the post of Professor of Chemistry at the University of St Petersburg. It was not until the last few years of the 1860s that he was to begin work on what we now know to be his great achievement – the arranging o the elements into the Periodic Table. At that time they were distinguished by their atomic weight. This characteristic had been proposed by the British chemist, Dalton, more than 50 years earlier. Mendeleev took Dalton’s work and improved it. He grouped the elements by their atomic weight and by the similarities they possessed in their properties. There were gaps in the table and Mendeleev believed that in the future new elements would be discovered to fill those gaps. His predictions were correct. Three of those elements were found during his lifetime: gallium, scandium and germanium. They provided the strongest support for his periodic table. The table has now become fundamental to our understanding of chemistry and of how the universe is put together. In Russia, the Tsar considered Mendeleev’s politics too liberal, and consequently Mendeleev resigned from the university in 1900. He remained a popular figure with the Russian people and was appointed Director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures in 1903. He continued in this post until his death from pneumonia on 20th January, 1907.