Outstanding facts from the life of the Russian scientist Mendeleev

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On February 8, 1834, the scientist Dmitry Mendeleev was born in Tobolsk, who successfully worked in many fields of science. One of his most famous discoveries is the periodic law of chemical elements. Interesting facts from the life of the Russian scientist Mendeleev.

Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev - father of D. I. Mendeleev, XIX century

Seventeenth child in the family

Dmitry Mendeleev was the seventeenth child in the family of Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev, who served as director of the Tobolsk gymnasium. At that time, a large family was atypical for the Russian intelligentsia, even in the villages such families were rare. However, by the time the future great scientist was born, two boys and five girls remained in the Mendeleev family: eight children died in infancy, three of them were not even given a name by their parents.

Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva (née Kornilieva), mother of D. I. Mendeleev

Monument to Dmitry Mendeleev and his periodic table on the wall of the V. N. Mendeleev in St. Petersburg

warrior and gold medalist

In the gymnasium, Dmitry Mendeleev studied poorly, did not like Latin and the Law of God. While studying at the Main Pedagogical Institute of St. Petersburg, the future scientist stayed for the second year. Studying was not easy at the beginning. In his first year at the institute, he managed to get unsatisfactory grades in all subjects, except mathematics. And in mathematics, he had only "satisfactory". But in the senior years, things went differently: the average annual score for Mendeleev was 4.5 with the only three - according to the Law of God. Mendeleev graduated from the institute in 1855 with a gold medal and was appointed a senior teacher at a gymnasium in Simferopol, but due to his health compromised during his studies and the outbreak of the Crimean War, he was transferred to Odessa, where he worked as a teacher at the Richelieu Lyceum.

Scales designed by D. I. Mendeleev for weighing gaseous and solid substances

Recognized master of suitcase affairs

Mendeleev loved to bind books, glue frames for portraits, and also make suitcases. In St. Petersburg and Moscow he was known as the best master of suitcase cases in Russia. “From Mendeleev himself,” the merchants said. His products were solid and of high quality. The scientist studied all the recipes for making glue known at that time and came up with his own special glue mixture. Mendeleev kept the method of its preparation a secret.

DI. Mendeleev. An attempt at a chemical understanding of the ether. St. Petersburg, 1905

Intelligence Scientist

Little known fact, but the famous scientist had to participate in industrial espionage. In 1890, the naval minister Nikolai Chikhachev turned to Dmitry Mendeleev and asked him to help him find the secret of making smokeless gunpowder. Since it was quite expensive to buy such gunpowder, the great chemist was asked to unravel the secret of production. Accepting the request of the tsarist government, Mendeleev ordered from the library the reports of the railways of Britain, France and Germany for 10 years. According to them, he made up the proportion of how much coal, saltpeter and the like were brought to the gunpowder factories. A week after the proportions were made, he made two smokeless propellants for Russia. Thus, Dmitry Mendeleev managed to obtain secret data that he obtained from open reports.

DI. Mendeleev, 1886

"Russian Standard" of vodka was not invented by Mendeleev

Dmitry Mendeleev did not invent vodka. The ideal strength of 40 degrees and vodka itself were invented before 1865, when Mendeleev defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic "Discourse on the combination of alcohol with water."There is not a word about vodka in his dissertation; it is devoted to the properties of mixtures of alcohol and water. In his work, the scientist established the proportions of the ratio of vodka and water, at which there is a limiting decrease in the volume of mixed liquids. It is a solution with an alcohol concentration of about 46 percent by weight. The ratio has nothing to do with 40 degrees. Forty-degree vodka appeared in Russia in 1843, when Dmitry Mendeleev was 9 years old. Then the Russian government, in the fight against diluted vodka, set a minimum threshold - vodka must have a strength of at least 40 degrees, the error was allowed at 2 degrees.

A photograph of D. I. Mendeleev in 1861, court photographer S. L. Levitsky

Russia bought "Mendeleevsky" gunpowder from the Americans

In 1893, Dmitry Mendeleev established the production of smokeless gunpowder invented by him, but the Russian government, then headed by Peter Stolypin, did not manage to patent it, and the invention was used overseas. In 1914, Russia bought several thousand tons of this gunpowder from the United States for gold. The Americans themselves, laughing, did not hide the fact that they were selling "Mendeleev's gunpowder" to the Russians.

A. Giffard's large tethered balloon, on which D. I. Mendeleev rose in 1878, in Paris

Inventor of the balloon

On October 19, 1875, in a report at a meeting of the Physical Society at St. Petersburg University, Dmitry Mendeleev put forward the idea of a balloon with a sealed gondola for studying the high-altitude layers of the atmosphere. The first version of the installation implied the possibility of ascent into the upper atmosphere, but only later the scientist designed a controlled aerostat with engines. However, the scientist did not even find money for the construction of one high-altitude balloon. As a result, Mendeleev's proposal was never implemented. The world's first stratospheric balloon - as they began to call hermetic balloons designed for flight into the stratosphere (more than 11 kilometers high) - flew only in 1931 from the German city of Augsburg.

Pycnometer D. I. Mendeleev

Mendeleev came up with the idea of using a pipeline for pumping oil

Dmitry Mendeleev created a fractional oil distillation scheme and formulated a theory of the inorganic origin of oil. He was the first to declare that it is a crime to burn oil in furnaces, since many chemical products can be obtained from it. He also suggested that oil companies should transport oil not in carts or wineskins, but in tanks, and that it be pumped through pipes. The scientist proved by figures how much more expedient it is to transport oil in bulk, and to build oil refineries in places where oil products are consumed.

Founders of the Russian Chemical Society (members of the chemical section of the 1st Congress of Russian Naturalists and Physicians, who issued a resolution on the establishment - January 4, 1868). Mendeleev is 10th from the left

Three times nominated for the Nobel Prize

Dmitry Mendeleev was nominated for the Nobel Prize, awarded since 1901, three times - in 1905, 1906 and 1907. However, only foreigners nominated him. Members of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, by secret ballot, repeatedly rejected his candidacy. Mendeleev was a member of many foreign academies and scientific societies, but he never became a member of his native Russian Academy.

Mendeleev's grave at Literatorskie Mostki in St. Petersburg

Chemical element number 101 is named after Mendeleev

A chemical element is named after Mendeleev - Mendelevium. Artificially produced in 1955, the element was named after the chemist who first began using the periodic table to predict the chemical properties of as yet undiscovered elements. In fact, Mendeleev is not the first to create the periodic table of elements, and not the first to suggest the periodicity of the chemical properties of elements. Mendeleev's achievement was the determination of the periodicity and, on its basis, the compilation of the table of elements. The scientist left empty cells for elements not yet discovered. As a result, using the periodicity of the table, it was possible to determine all the physical and chemical properties of the missing elements.

Ilya Repin. Portrait of D. I. Mendeleev in the mantle of a Doctor of Laws from the University of Edinburgh. 1885 year