History of Dmitri Mendeleev

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was born on 8 February 1834, in the village of Verkhnie Aremzyani, near Tobolsk in Siberia. Dimitri was the youngest of 14 surviving siblings.

In his birth year, Mendeleev's father Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev became blind losing his teaching position at the local gymnasium(school).In his birth year.

At the age of 13, Mendeleev's father passed away in October 1847.

In December 1848, the factory of Mendeleev's mother burned down, which strongly affected the financial situation of the family. During that time, Mendeleev was attending the gymnasium(school) in Tobolsk.

In 1849, Mendeleev's mother took him across Russia from Siberia to Moscow intending to get Mendeleev enrolled at Moscow University. The university in Moscow did not accept him.

After the rejection, the mother and son continued to Saint Petersburg, his father's alma mater. The poor Mendeleev family relocated to Saint Petersburg where he entered the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1850.

Soon after Mendeleev was enrolled in the Main Pedagogical Institute, Mendeleev's mother suffered from tuberculosis, unfortunately, she passed away in September 1850.

In 1855, Mendeleev graduated from Main Pedagogical Institute.

After the recovery from tuberculosis, Mendeleev returned to Saint Petersburg to continue his education where he earned his master's degree in 1856 and began conducting his researches in organic chemistry.

Mendeleev went to study abroad at the University of Heidelberg for two years which was financed by a government fellowship, during that time he set up his laboratory in his apartment instead of working along with the prominent chemists of the university, including Robert Bunsen, Emil Erlenmeyer, and August Kekulé.

In September 1860, Mendeleev attended an international chemistry congress that was held to discuss critical issues as atomic weights, chemical symbols, and chemical formulas, where he met many of Europe’s leading chemists. In later years, that congress was especially remembered by Mendeleev due to an important paper circulated to the Italian chemist Stanislao Cannizzaro that explained the notion of atomic weights.

Between 1859 and 1861, Mendeleev worked on the capillarity of liquids and the workings of the spectroscope in Heidelberg.

Later in 1861, Mendeleev published a textbook named Organic Chemistry, which won him the Demidov Prize of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

By the end of 1861, Mendeleev returned to St. Petersburg.

On 4 April 1862, Mendeleev got engaged to Feozva Nikitichna Leshcheva in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Together, Mendeleev and Feozva Nikitichna Leshcheva got married on 27 April 1862 at Nikolaev Engineering Institute's church in St. Petersburg. Together they raised two children, a son named Volodya and a daughter Olga, who he named after his beloved sister.

In 1863, there were 56 known elements with a new element being discovered at a rate of approximately one per year, there existed almost 63 known elements by end of the 1860s. And during Mendeleev's work on organizing the existed elements according to their atomic weight, he proposed the potential of existence for new elements such as germanium, gallium, and scandium. Back then this was strongly criticized.

Mendeleev became a professor at the Saint Petersburg Technological Institute and Saint Petersburg State University in 1864.

In 1865, he became a Doctor of Science for his dissertation "On the Combinations of Water with Alcohol".

At the beginning of his teaching career as a professor, he couldn't find a textbook that satisfied his needs for his courses. So, he wrote the definitive textbook of his time, Principles of Chemistry (two volumes, 1868–1870). These books have had many editions and translations. Also, the books helped Mendeleev in his later discoveries.

During his researches, Mendeleev discovered a dependency between the atomic number of an element and it's physical and chemical properties. So, In March 1869, Mendeleev postulated the periodic law, also called Mendeleev's law. It stated that the physical and chemical properties of the elements recur periodically when arranged in the order of their atomic weights.

In 1869, Mendeleev made his most important discovery. As he attempted to classify the elements according to their chemical properties, he noticed patterns that led him to postulate his periodic table.

Beginning in the 1870s, Mendeleev cared about fields concerning his motherland beyond chemistry, looking at aspects of the Russian industry, and technical issues in agricultural productivity. He explored demographic issues, sponsored studies of the Arctic Sea, tried to measure the value of chemical fertilizers, and promoted a merchant navy.

Years after Mendeleev predicted the existence of some elements and being criticized, Mendeleev was proven right by the discovery of elements like gallium in 1875, scandium in 1879. And later, germanium also was discovered in 1886.

In 1876, Mendeleev became obsessed with Anna Ivanova Popova and began courting her. He proposed to her and threatened suicide if she refused.

Mendeleev's divorce from Leshcheva was finalized one month after he had married Popova on 2 April 1882. Even after the divorce, Mendeleev was technically a bigamist, the state of entering a marriage with one person while still legally married to another, where the Russian Orthodox Church required at least seven years before lawful remarriage.

In 1882, Mendeleev was awarded the Davy medal by the royal society of London along with Julius Lothar Meyer, for their discovery of the periodic relations of the atomic weights.

In 1905, Mendeleev was awarded by the royal society of London with the Copley Medal, a medal given for outstanding achievements in research in any branch of science.

In 1906, the Nobel Committee for Chemistry recommended to the Swedish Academy, at which Mendeleev was a member, to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1906 to Mendeleev for his discovery of the periodic system. The Chemistry Section of the Swedish Academy supported this recommendation. The Academy was then supposed to approve the Committee's choice, as it has done in almost every case. Unexpectedly, at the full meeting of the Academy, some members of the committee pressed for the rejection of Mendeleev, arguing that the periodic system was too old to acknowledge its discovery in 1906.

On 2 February 1907, Mendeleev died at the age of 72 in Saint Petersburg from influenza. His last words were to his physician: "Doctor, you have science, I have faith," which is possibly a Jules Verne quote.