Mendeleev: a fighter against oil oligarchs and a supporter of the ether theory

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

Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev skipped chemistry lessons at school. They spoke of him as the Russian Da Vinci - so wide was the range of his scientific interests. During his lifetime, he was called a genius, but the Nobel Prize was never given.

Pedagogy and Anatomy

As the seventeenth child in the family and leaving behind 7 descendants, Mendeleev was very fond of communicating with children. He did not distinguish between his own offspring, the children of numerous friends who stayed in his house, or the peasant children. One of Mendeleev's favorite entertainments was the home theater, which the children staged right in the hay barn, and his favorite production was Shakespeare's Hamlet with his daughter Lyubochka-Ophelia and the Danish prince Alexander Blok. The ability to get along well with children is understandable. It is known that Mendeleev was a teacher by education. He followed in the footsteps of his father and graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the Main Pedagogical Institute of St. Petersburg. Less is known that Mendeleev had previously wanted to become a doctor. Meanwhile, he was preparing to enter the medical academy, but abandoned his idea after visiting the anatomical theater.

Envy and Boblovo

Mendeleev traveled a lot. In France alone, he visited 33 times. But first of all, the scientist directed his interests to Russia: in the course of his scientific activities, he visited more than 100 Russian cities. His trips were not always related solely to work. In his diary about the pilgrimage to Valaam and Konevets, he wrote that he envies the monks who have access to prayer solitude. In the life of Mendeleev, there periodically came moments when he dreamed of getting rid of the hustle and bustle: "you have to fulfill the duties, but there is no strength and there is no time." Indeed, there were many responsibilities: apart from the service, Mendeleev spent a lot of time at his estate in Boblovo, where he tried, among other things, to prove to the whole world that the harvests in the Russian non-black soil are no worse than German or Dutch ones. And it was here, in Boblovo, that Mendeleev, probably, could acquire for a time that monastic solitude, which he envied.

Silence

The Mendeleev family's house was often full of guests. Dmitry Ivanovich maintained friendship with Borodin, Sechenov, Mechnikov. Gogol, Glinka, Pogodin, Baratynsky, Timiryazev, Vernadsky came to see him. A favorite chess partner was the painter Arkhip Kuindzhi. Whether there were any bosom friends among them is hard to say. For all the breadth of his nature and sociability, Mendeleev was very self-sufficient, and, perhaps, he himself was his best friend. His favorite poem was Tyutchev's Silence:

Glory and sarcasm

Mendeleev loved it when the peasants, on the occasion, performed magnificent songs in his honor: “Dmitry Ivanitch has a golden head! Dmitry Ivanovich has a wise head! " During the dignity, Mendeleev grunt noisily, stamped his feet and tried to sing along. At the same time, he corrected the peasants every time: "Brothers, I'm not your master, but Dmitry Ivanovich." He was absolutely indifferent to ranks, titles and awards. Once one of the students introduced himself as “Prince B.” at the exam, to which Professor Mendeleev remarked sarcastically: “Today the exam is not being passed by your letter. Come when those whose surname begins with "K" will take.

Flights in dreams and in reality

The story is widely known that Mendeleev saw the famous periodic system in a dream. Perhaps the scientist himself had a hand in the appearance of the myth, tired of talking to ignorant people and telling the details of his discovery. The fact that Mendeleev made a balloon flight is also well known. The reasons and nuances of the flight, which was made by an already middle-aged scientist, are spoken less often. Meanwhile, Mendeleev was forced to rise into the air by a solar eclipse, which fell on August 7, 1897. The scientist decided to implement his own project - to observe the eclipse, rising above the clouds. The military put at his disposal a Russian balloon and an experienced aeronaut. But as luck would have it, it started to rain, from which the ball began to get wet more and more. At the moment when many were ready to give up on ventures, Mendeleev's fellow traveler jumped out of the ball. Dmitry Ivanovich began to rise slowly and soon disappeared behind the clouds. He managed to observe a solar eclipse, and before descending, he showed not only fearlessness, but also miracles of flexibility: in order to untangle the rope from the gas valve, he had to climb aboard the basket.

Spiritualism

Mendeleev was convinced that prejudices are equally terrible for both faith and science, so he tried to debunk the myth of the spiritualism that was fashionable at that time. For seances, he personally designed tables, to which he attached manometers, and invited a spiritualist. The result of the revelations was the monograph Materials for Judging Spiritualism. Ambiguous assessments followed: many said that the pressure gauge was not able to cope with "subtle matters." Dostoevsky, however, drew attention to the fact that spiritualism is a social phenomenon, and "you cannot approach it with a manometer." However, it was not the method used by Mendeleev that was important here, but his desire to draw attention to the problem of prejudice - and he succeeded.

Revenge of the Empire

Mendeleev's phrase is well known: “Oil is not fuel! You can also heat with banknotes! " It is difficult to underestimate the scientist's contribution to the country's oil industry. At the suggestion of Mendeleev, the barbaric four-year lease on oil fields was canceled, and this was the first blow to the oil kings of that time, the Nobel brothers. Then came the second blow - Mendeleev proposed to transport oil through pipes. The Baku-Batumi oil pipeline and the first oil refinery were built. Then Dmitry Ivanovich dealt a third blow to the Nobel empire: he developed oils based on oil refining waste, which cost several times cheaper than kerosene. Thus, Russia was able not only to refuse to export kerosene from America, but also to import oil products to Europe. At the same time, Mendeleev always opposed the thoughtless squandering of natural resources, believing that the future belongs to industry. As you know, Mendeleev was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times, but he never received it. Whether it was the revenge of the Nobels or the scientist's Russian colleagues who, by the way, never took the initiative to nominate Mendeleev, "tried" it remains a mystery.

How Ether disappeared from the periodic table

What is now presented in schools and universities under the name “Periodic table of chemical elements of D. I. Mendeleev , - frank fake.

The last time in an undistorted form this periodic table was published in 1906 in St. Petersburg (textbook "Fundamentals of Chemistry", VIII edition).

A similar table was published in the book "An Attempt at a Chemical Understanding of the World Ether"

After DI Mendeleev's death, the main distortion of the Table was carried out - the transfer of the "zero group" to its end, to the right, and the introduction of the so-called. "Periods". Such a seemingly harmless manipulation is logically explainable only as a conscious elimination of the main methodological link in Mendeleev's discovery: the periodic table of elements in its beginning, source, i.e. in the upper left corner of the Table, must have a zero group and a zero row, where the element "X" is located (according to Mendeleev - "Newtonium"), ie world broadcast.

Moreover, being the only system-forming element of the entire Table of Derived Elements, this element "X" is the argument of the entire Periodic Table. Transferring the zero group of the Table to its end destroys the very idea of this fundamental principle of the entire system of elements according to Mendeleev.

To confirm the above, let us give the floor to D. I. Mendeleev himself:

("An attempt at a chemical understanding of the world ether." 1905, p. 27)

("Fundamentals of Chemistry". VIII ed., 1906, p. 613 et seq.)