Dmitri Mendeleev

Member of
Göttingen Academy of Sciences
American Philosophical Society
Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1889)
Royal Society (since 1892)
Turin Academy of Sciences (since 1893)
National Lynx Academy (since 1893)
Prussian Academy of Sciences (since 1900)
Hungarian Academy of Sciences (since 1900)
National Academy of Sciences of the United States (since 1903)
Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1904)
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (since 1905) View and edit data on Wikidata

Building upon the spectral analysis established by the Germans Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff, he addressed physicochemical problems related to the emission spectra of elements. He determined specific volumes and analyzed the liquefaction conditions of gases, as well as the origin of petroleum.

His principal research led to the formulation of the periodic law of the elements, the basis of the periodic table that bears his name. He was influenced by Stanislao Cannizzaro's 1858 article, "Sunto di un corso di Filosofia Chimica."

On the verge of giving up, he obtained a divorce from his wife and went in search of Anna, who was in Rome. In 1882, they married. They had four children, the eldest of whom, Liubov, married the Russian poet Alexander Blok.

Although he is best known in the West for creating the Periodic Table of the Elements, Dmitri Mendeleev's contribution to the development of Russia was vast, and he is therefore recognized as a true figure of the Russian Renaissance. His fields of study ranged from chemistry to aeronautics.

His extensive knowledge led him to become an influential figure among his contemporaries; he was an advisor to the Russian Minister of Finance, Sergei Witte, and wrote more than 70 articles on the country's economic and social development.

Mendeleev was one of the greatest teachers of his time and is credited with educating thousands of students. He died on February 2, 1907, nearly blind. Mendeleev is considered a genius, not only for his ingenuity in applying all that was known and predicting the unknown about the chemical elements and representing it in the periodic table, but also for the numerous works he carried out throughout his life in various fields of science, agriculture, animal husbandry, industry, and petroleum.

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was born in the village of Verkhny Aremzyani, located east of Tobolsk, Siberia. He was the youngest of at least 17 children in the family of Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev and Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva.[2] In the same year he was born, his father went blind, thus losing his job as headmaster of the village school.

They received an insufficient pension, so his mother had to take charge of the family and reopen the glass factory that his maternal grandfather had founded near Tobolsk. From a young age, he excelled in science at school, but not in spelling. A brother-in-law, exiled for political reasons, and a chemist at the factory instilled in him a love of science.

At the age of fifteen, Dmitri's father died, and shortly afterward, the glass factory his mother managed was destroyed by fire. By this time, most of his siblings, except for one sister, had already left home, and his mother took them to Moscow so that Dmitri could attend university. However, Mendeleev was not admitted; his Siberian origin barred him from the universities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, so he studied at the Pedagogical Institute in the latter city.[3][4] One of his most striking physical features was his enormous beard, which, according to historians, he only shaved once a year.[5]

In 1862, he married Feozva Nikitichna Leschiova, with whom he had three children, one of whom died. It was an unhappy marriage, and they separated in 1871. He was accused of bigamy because, after divorcing his wife, he remarried without waiting the seven years required by Russian law.

He found happiness by marrying Anna Ivanovna Popova, 26 years his junior. To achieve this, Mendeleev spent four years desperate, even falling into a depression, because his wife refused to grant him a divorce and Anna's family vehemently opposed it.