When was Dmitry Mendeleev born? Life and work of Dmitry Mendeleev

Who is Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev? March 4th, 2014

Pro Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907) short article writing is harder than a thick book. In so many areas of science (and not only in chemistry), he distinguished himself by making first-class discoveries!

But it would be a mistake to think that the life of D.I. Mendeleev was a kind of triumphal march from victory to victory. Most likely the opposite. Everything was difficult for him.

Dmitry Ivanovich was born in the city of Tobolsk. He was the last, seventeenth, child in the family, and the eighth of the surviving children. He studied, as it was then said, "for copper money." His mother, Maria Dmitrievna, after the death of her father, Ivan Pavlovich, managed alone with a large family and fed her. In the possession of her family was a glass factory, her mother took the place of the manager at this factory. This was the source of income.

When Dmitry Ivanovich graduated from the Tobolsk gymnasium, his mother left forever her native Siberia and moved to Moscow with her son and youngest daughter.

There are many legends about D.I. Mendeleev, which most often turn out to be fiction. One of these inventions: Dmitry Ivanovich did not shine with knowledge and did not pass the entrance exams to the university. In fact, graduates of the gymnasium entered the university without exams. But the university is only in its own educational district. Tobolsk belonged to the Kazan educational district. Therefore, D.I. Mendeleev could only enter Kazan University. But it seemed inconvenient for the mother to settle in Kazan. Relatives lived in Moscow, including the mother's brother, whose help, as she hoped, would allow her son to enter an unacceptable university. Did not work out. And only after three years of worries and troubles, in 1850, D.I. Mendeleev became a student of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Main Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg. So Dmitry Ivanovich did not graduate from universities.

After graduating from the Pedagogical Institute, D.I. Mendeleev worked for two years in the south of Russia as a teacher, first at the Simferopol male gymnasium, and then at the Richelieu gymnasium in Odessa. In 1856 he brilliantly defended his master's thesis in chemistry. From 1857 to 1890, D.I. Mendeleev taught chemistry and chemical technology at St. Petersburg University. In memory of this, one of the lines of Vasilyevsky Island, which passed next to the building of St. Petersburg University, is called Mendeleevskaya.

Dmitry Ivanovich's trip on a two-year scientific mission to Germany, to Heidelberg University, was very fruitful. He went on a business trip on the recommendation of the famous chemist A.A. Voskresensky in 1859 and worked in Heidelberg until 1861. In the photographs of that time, the twenty-five-year-old scientist is already with a beard. But youth is youth. During his stay in Heidelberg, Dmitry Ivanovich had an affair with an actress. From this novel a child was born, for the maintenance of which Mendeleev sent money, although he was not completely sure of his paternity.

Another one of the legends about D.I. Mendeleev. Returning to Russia from Germany, in 1865 he defended his doctoral dissertation under the cheerful title "On the combination of alcohol with water." But this dissertation did not at all reveal that the strength of vodka should be forty degrees. What fortress should and can be vodka, they knew almost a hundred years before. D.I.Mendeleev's doctoral dissertation marked the beginning of one of the sections of physical chemistry that was then emerging, the theory of solutions. Why exactly solutions of water and alcohol interested the scientist? Because when mixing water and alcohol, the volume of the resulting solution is significantly less than the sum of the volumes of the components. This is because small water molecules are nested inside larger alcohol molecules, forming a "tight stack".

Returning to Russia in 1861, D.I. Mendeleev taught at St. Petersburg University and several other educational institutions in the capital. In the same 1861, his outstanding textbook "Organic Chemistry" was published.

The main discovery of Dmitry Ivanovich, the periodic system chemical elements, also arose largely as a result of pedagogical activity and work on writing the most fundamental textbook "Fundamentals of Chemistry".

Inorganic chemistry deals with a wide variety of elements. In fact, each element has its own chemistry. Should students take dozens of specific chemistry courses, each on a specific element?

On the other hand, chemists have long noticed the similarity of various elements: lithium, sodium and potassium, iron, nickel and cobalt, inert (or, as they were also called, noble) gases ... But before the discovery of D.I. Mendeleev, all these were observations on empirical level. Mendeleev discovered the periodicity of property changes in all known elements. And he indicated places for elements not yet open. The discovery of new elements had to wait several years. The first of these, gallium, was discovered in 1875, five years after the publication of the famous periodic table, the second, scandium, in 1879. This was partly the reason that D.I. Mendeleev did not become an academician. In 1880, he was nominated to the academician, but the members of the Academy of Sciences swamped the scientist: there are no discoveries in chemistry. The periodic system was considered by many not as a scientific discovery, but as a methodological technique. Or would you like to count...

In 1869, an article by D.I. Mendeleev “The experience of a system of elements based on their atomic weight and chemical similarity” appears. By the way, it was reported at the first meeting of the newly created Russian Chemical Society. In 1871, a revised article "The Periodic Law for the Chemical Elements" appeared, which outlined this outstanding discovery.

And again - a legend. They say that D.I. Mendeleev dreamed of the Periodic Law in a dream. The scientist himself told about this to several friends. This is a bit like the story of an apple falling on I. Newton's head, which allegedly prompted him to discover the law of universal gravitation, which was actually invented by the great mockingbird Voltaire. On the other hand, why not? The solution to a problem, if you think hard about it, sometimes comes at the most unexpected moments and for the most unexpected reasons.

The interests of D.I. Mendeleev are surprisingly diverse and in any field he achieved serious results. Among other things, he laid the foundation for scientific metrology. Engaged in petrochemistry and oil refining. He revealed the secret of nitroglycerin gunpowder, which the French began to produce. He participated in the creation of the first Tomsk University in Siberia and almost became its rector. He flew in a hot air balloon. Even engaged scientific research spiritualism.

All in all, amazing person and an amazing scientist, whom Russia has every right to be proud of.

Origin

Family and Children

Scientific activity

Periodic Law

Gas research

The doctrine of solutions

Aeronautics

Metrology

powder making

Ural expedition

To the knowledge of Russia

Three services to the motherland

D. I. Mendeleev and the world

Confession

Awards, academies and societies

Mendeleev congresses

Mendeleev readings

Nobel epic

"Chemists"

Suitcases D. I. Mendeleev

Legend of the invention of vodka

Monuments to D. I. Mendeleev

Memory of D. I. Mendeleev

Settlements and stations

Geography and astronomy

Educational establishments

Societies, congresses, journals

Industrial enterprises

Literature

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev(January 27, 1834, Tobolsk - January 20, 1907, St. Petersburg) - Russian encyclopedic scientist: chemist, physical chemist, physicist, metrologist, economist, technologist, geologist, meteorologist, teacher, aeronaut, instrument maker. Professor of St. Petersburg University; Corresponding member in the category of "Physics" of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Among the most famous discoveries is the periodic law of chemical elements, one of the fundamental laws of the universe, inalienable for all natural science.

Biography

Origin

Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev was born on January 27 (February 8), 1834 in Tobolsk in the family of Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev (1783-1847), who at that time held the position of director of the Tobolsk gymnasium and schools of the Tobolsk district. Dmitry was the last, seventeenth child in the family. Of the seventeen children, eight died in infancy (three of them did not even have time to give names to their parents), and one of the daughters, Masha, died at the age of 14 in the mid-1820s in Saratov from consumption. History has preserved the document on the birth of Dmitry Mendeleev - the metric book of the spiritual consistory for 1834, where on a yellowed page in the column about those born in the Tobolsk Epiphany Church it is written: Dmitry".

In one of the options for dedicating his first major work to the mother, “Studies of Aqueous Solutions by Specific Gravity”, Dmitry Ivanovich will say:

His paternal grandfather, Pavel Maksimovich Sokolov (1751-1808), was a priest of the village of Tihomandritsy, Vyshnevolotsky district, Tver province, located two kilometers from the northern tip of Lake Udomlya. Only one of his four sons, Timothy, retained his father's surname. As was customary at that time among the clergy, after graduating from the seminary, the three sons of P. M. Sokolov were given different surnames: Alexander - Tihomandritsky (after the name of the village), Vasily - Pokrovsky (after the parish in which Pavel Maksimovich served), and Ivan , the father of Dmitry Ivanovich, in the form of a nickname, received the name of the neighboring landowners Mendeleev (Dmitry Ivanovich himself interpreted its origin as follows: “... given to the father when he bartered something, like the neighboring landowner Mendeleev changed horses”).

After graduating from a religious school in 1804, Dmitry Ivanovich's father, Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev, entered the philological department of the Main Pedagogical Institute. After graduating from it among the best students in 1807, Ivan Pavlovich was appointed "teacher of philosophy, fine arts and political economy" in Tobolsk, where in 1809 he married Maria Dmitrievna Kornilieva. In December 1818 he was appointed director of schools in the Tambov province. From the summer of 1823 to November 1827, the Mendeleev family lived in Saratov, and later returned to Tobolsk, where Ivan Pavlovich received the position of director of the Tobolsk classical gymnasium. His extraordinary qualities of mind, high culture and creativity determined the pedagogical principles by which he was guided in teaching his subjects. In the year Dmitry was born, Ivan Pavlovich went blind, which forced him to retire. To remove the cataract, he, accompanied by his daughter Ekaterina, went to Moscow, where, as a result of a successful operation by Dr. Brass, his sight was restored. But back to previous work he could no longer, and the family lived on his small pension.

The mother of D. I. Mendeleev came from an old family of Siberian merchants and industrialists. This smart and energetic woman played a special role in the life of the family. Having no education, she went through the gymnasium course on her own with her brothers. Due to the difficult financial situation that had developed due to the illness of Ivan Pavlovich, the Mendeleevs moved to the village of Aremzyanskoye, where there was a small glass factory of Maria Dmitrievna's brother Vasily Dmitrievich Korniliev, who lived in Moscow. M. D. Mendeleev received the right to manage the factory, and after the death of I. P. Mendeleev in 1847, a large family lived on the funds received from it. Dmitry Ivanovich recalled: “There, at the glass factory run by my mother, I got my first impressions of nature, people, industrial affairs.” Noticing special abilities younger son, she managed to find the strength to leave her native Siberia forever, leaving Tobolsk to give Dmitry the opportunity to get a higher education. In the year her son graduated from the gymnasium, Maria Dmitrievna liquidated all affairs in Siberia and with Dmitry and youngest daughter Elizabeth went to Moscow to determine the young man to the university.

Childhood

The childhood of D. I. Mendeleev coincided with the time of the exiled Decembrists in Siberia. A. M. Muravyov, P. N. Svistunov, M. A. Fonvizin lived in the Tobolsk province. Dmitry Ivanovich's sister, Olga, became the wife of N. V. Basargin, a former member of the Southern Society, and they for a long time lived in Yalutorovsk next to I. I. Pushchin, with whom they provided assistance to the Mendeleev family, which became vital after the death of Ivan Pavlovich.

Also, his uncle V. D. Korniliev had a great influence on the worldview of the future scientist, the Mendeleevs lived with him repeatedly and for a long time during his stay in Moscow. Vasily Dmitrievich was the manager of the princes Trubetskoy, who lived on Pokrovka, like V. D. Korniliev; and his house was often visited by many representatives of the cultural environment, including literary evenings or without any reason at all, there were easily writers: F. N. Glinka, S. P. Shevyrev, I. I. Dmitriev, M. P. Pogodin, E. A. Baratynsky, N. V. Gogol, Sergey Lvovich Pushkin, the poet’s father, also happened to be a guest; artists P. A. Fedotov, N. A. Ramazanov; scientists: N. F. Pavlov, I. M. Snegirev, P. N. Kudryavtsev. In 1826, Korniliev and his wife, the daughter of Commander Billings, hosted Alexander Pushkin, who had returned to Moscow from exile, on Pokrovka.

Information has been preserved indicating that D. I. Mendeleev once saw N. V. Gogol in the house of the Kornilievs.

For all that, Dmitry Ivanovich remained the same boy as most of his peers. The son of Dmitry Ivanovich, Ivan Mendeleev, recalls that one day, when his father was unwell, he told him: “It hurts his whole body like after our school fight on the Tobolsk bridge.”

It should be noted that among the teachers of the gymnasium, a Siberian who taught Russian literature and literature, later the famous Russian poet Pyotr Pavlovich Ershov, stood out, since 1844 - the inspector of the Tobolsk gymnasium, as once his teacher Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev. Later, the author of The Little Humpbacked Horse and Dmitry Ivanovich were destined to become relatives to some extent.

Family and Children

Dmitry Ivanovich was married twice. In 1862, he married Feozva Nikitichnaya Leshcheva, a native of Tobolsk (stepdaughter of the famous author of The Little Humpbacked Horse, Pyotr Pavlovich Ershov). His wife (Fiza, given name) was 6 years older than him. Three children were born in this marriage: daughter Maria (1863) - she died in infancy, son Volodya (1865-1898) and daughter Olga (1868-1950). At the end of 1878, 43-year-old Dmitry Mendeleev fell passionately in love with 23-year-old Anna Ivanovna Popova (1860-1942), the daughter of a Don Cossack from Uryupinsk. In the second marriage, D. I. Mendeleev had four children: Lyubov, Ivan (1883-1936) and twins Maria and Vasily. At the beginning of the 21st century Of the descendants of Mendeleev, only Alexander, the grandson of his daughter Maria, is alive.

D. I. Mendeleev was the father-in-law of the Russian poet Alexander Blok, who was married to his daughter Lyubov.

D. I. Mendeleev was the uncle of the Russian scientist Mikhail Yakovlevich (professor-hygienist) and Fyodor Yakovlevich (professor-physicist) Kapustin, who were the sons of his elder sister Ekaterina Ivanovna Mendeleeva (Kapustina).

About the Japanese granddaughter of Dmitry Ivanovich - in an article dedicated to the work of B. N. Rzhonsnitsky.

Chronicle of the creative life of a scientist

1841-1859

• 1841 - entered the Tobolsk gymnasium.
• 1855 - graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Main Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg.
• 1855 - Senior teacher of natural sciences at the Simferopol Men's Gymnasium. At the request of the St. Petersburg doctor N. F. Zdekauer, in mid-September, Dmitri Mendeleev was examined by N. I. Pirogov, who stated that the patient was in a satisfactory condition: “You will outlive us both.”
• 1855-1856 - senior teacher at the gymnasium at the Richelieu Lyceum in Odessa.
• 1856 - brilliantly defended his dissertation "for the right to lecture" - "The structure of silica compounds" (opponents A. A. Voskresensky and M. V. Skoblikov), successfully read the introductory lecture "The structure of silicate compounds"; at the end of January, a separate edition in St. Petersburg was published PhD thesis D. I. Mendeleev “Isomorphism in connection with other relations of crystalline form to composition”; On October 10, he was awarded the degree of Master of Chemistry.
• 1857 - On January 9, he was approved as Privatdozent of the Imperial St. Petersburg University in the Department of Chemistry.
• 1857-1890 - taught at the Imperial St. Petersburg University (since 1865 - professor of chemical technology, since 1867 - professor of general chemistry) - lectures on chemistry in the 2nd Cadet Corps; at the same time, in 1863-1872, he was a professor at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, in 1863-1872 he headed the chemical laboratory of the institute, and at the same time taught at the Nikolaev Engineering Academy and College; - at the Institute of the Corps of Railway Engineers.
• 1859-1861 - was on a scientific mission in Heidelberg.

Heidelberg period (1859-1861)

Having received permission in January 1859 to travel to Europe “for improvement in the sciences”, D. I. Mendeleev only in April, after completing a course of lectures at the university and classes in the 2nd Cadet Corps and the Mikhailovskaya Artillery Academy, was able to leave St. Petersburg.

He had a clear research plan - a theoretical consideration of the close relationship between the chemical and physical properties of substances based on the study of the cohesive forces of particles, which should have been the data obtained experimentally in the process of measurements at various temperatures of the surface tension of liquids - capillarity.

A month later, after getting acquainted with the possibilities of several scientific centers- preference was given to Heidelberg University, where outstanding natural scientists work: R. Bunsen, G. Kirchhoff, G. Helmholtz, E. Erlenmeyer and others. There is information that indicates that later D. I. Mendeleev had a meeting in Heidelberg with J. W. Gibbs. The equipment of R. Bunsen's laboratory did not allow for such "delicate experiments as capillary", and D. I. Mendeleev forms an independent research base: he brought gas to a rented apartment, adapted a separate room for the synthesis and purification of substances, another - for observations. In Bonn, the "famous glass maestro" G. Gessler gives him lessons, having made about 20 thermometers and "inimitably good devices for determining specific gravity." He ordered special cathetometers and microscopes from the famous Parisian mechanics Perrault and Salleron.

The works of this period are of great importance for understanding the methodology of large-scale theoretical generalization, to which well-prepared and constructed finest private studies are subject, and what will feature his universe. This is a theoretical experience of "molecular mechanics", the initial values ​​of which were assumed to be the mass, volume and force of interaction of particles (molecules). The scientist's workbooks show that he consistently searched for an analytical expression demonstrating the relationship between the composition of a substance and these three parameters. D. I. Mendeleev’s assumption about the function of surface tension associated with the structure and composition of matter allows us to speak about the foresight of a “parachor”, but the data of the middle of the 19th century were not able to become the basis for the logical conclusion of this study - D. I. Mendeleev had to abandon theoretical generalization.

At present, “molecular mechanics”, the main provisions of which D. I. Mendeleev tried to formulate, has only historical significance, meanwhile, these studies of the scientist allow us to observe the relevance of his views, which corresponded to the advanced ideas of the era, and gained general distribution only after the International Chemical Congress in Karlsruhe (1860).

In Heidelberg, Mendeleev had an affair with actress Agnes Feuchtmann, to whom he subsequently sent money for a child, although he was not sure of his paternity.

1860-1907

• 1860 - September 3-5, takes part in the first International Chemical Congress in Karlsruhe.
• 1865 - January 31 (February 12) at a meeting of the Council of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University, he defended his doctoral dissertation "On the combination of alcohol with water", in which the foundations of his theory of solutions were laid.
• 1876 ​​- On December 29 (January 10), 1877, he was elected a corresponding member in the "physical" category of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, in 1880 he was nominated for academician, but on November 11 (23) he was voted out by the German majority of the Academy, which caused a sharp public protest.
• He took part in the development of technologies for the first plant in Russia for the production of machine oils launched in 1879 in the village of Konstantinovsky in the Yaroslavl province, which now bears his name.
• 1880s - Dmitry Ivanovich again studies solutions, publishes the work "Investigation of aqueous solutions by specific gravity."
• 1880-1888 - took an active part in the development of the project for the creation and construction of the first Siberian University in Russian Asia in Tomsk, for which he repeatedly advised the head of the TSU construction committee, Professor V. M. Florinsky. He was planned as the first rector of this university, but due to a number of family reasons, he did not go to Tomsk in 1888. A few years later, he actively helped in the creation of the Tomsk Institute of Technology and the formation of chemical science in it.
• 1890 - left St. Petersburg University due to a conflict with the Minister of Education, who, during student unrest, refused to accept a student petition from Mendeleev.
• 1892 - Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev - scientist-custodian of the Depot of exemplary weights and weights, which in 1893, on his initiative, was transformed into the Main Chamber of Measures and Weights (now the All-Russian Research Institute of Metrology named after D. I. Mendeleev).
• 1893 - worked at the chemical plant of P.K. Ushkov (later - named after L.Ya. Karpov; Bondyuzhsky settlement, now Mendeleevsk) using the plant's production base to produce smokeless powder (pyrocollodion). Subsequently, he noted that having visited "many Western European chemical plants, he saw with pride that what was created by a Russian leader could not only not yield, but also in many respects surpass the foreign one."
• 1899 - leads the Ural expedition, implying the stimulation of the industrial and economic development of the region.
• 1900 - participates in the World Exhibition in Paris; he wrote the first in Russian - a long article on synthetic fibers "Viscose at the Paris Exhibition", which noted the importance for Russia of the development of their industry.
• 1903 - the first chairman of the State Examination Commission of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, in the creation of which the scientist took an active part. On the visit of D. I. Mendeleev to the institute during the days of the defense of the first theses, among others, Ivan Fedorovich Ponomarev (1882-1982) recalled 60 years later.

Member of many academies of sciences and scientific societies. One of the founders of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society (1868 - chemical, and 1872 - physical) and its third president (since 1932 it was transformed into the All-Union Chemical Society, which was then named after him, now - the Russian Chemical Society named after D.I. . Mendeleev).

D. I. Mendeleev died on January 20 (February 2), 1907 in St. Petersburg. He was buried at the Literary bridges of the Volkovsky cemetery.

He left more than 1500 works, among which are the classic "Fundamentals of Chemistry" (parts 1-2, 1869-1871, 13th ed., 1947) - the first harmonious presentation of inorganic chemistry.

The 101st chemical element, mendelevium, is named after Mendeleev.

Scientific activity

D. I. Mendeleev is the author of fundamental research in chemistry, physics, metrology, meteorology, economics, fundamental works on aeronautics, agriculture, chemical technology, public education and other works closely related to the needs of the development of the productive forces of Russia.

D. I. Mendeleev studied (in 1854-1856) the phenomena of isomorphism, revealing the relationship between the crystalline form and the chemical composition of compounds, as well as the dependence of the properties of elements on the magnitude of their atomic volumes.

He discovered in 1860 the "absolute boiling point of liquids", or the critical temperature.

On December 16, 1860, he wrote from Heidelberg to the trustee of the St. Petersburg educational district I. D. Delyanov: "... the main subject of my studies is physical chemistry."

He designed in 1859 a pycnometer - a device for determining the density of a liquid. Created in 1865-1887 the hydrate theory of solutions. He developed ideas about the existence of compounds of variable composition.

Exploring gases, Mendeleev found in 1874 the general equation of state ideal gas, including, as a particular, the dependence of the state of the gas on temperature, discovered in 1834 by the physicist B. P. E. Clapeyron (the Clapeyron-Mendeleev equation).

In 1877, Mendeleev put forward a hypothesis of the origin of oil from heavy metal carbides, which, however, is not accepted by most scientists today; proposed the principle of fractional distillation in oil refining.

In 1880 he put forward the idea of ​​underground coal gasification. Dealt with chemicals Agriculture, promoted the use of mineral fertilizers, irrigation of arid lands. In 1890-1892, together with I. M. Cheltsov, he took part in the development of smokeless powder. He is the author of a number of works on metrology. He created the exact theory of scales, developed the best designs of the rocker arm and the cage, and proposed the most accurate methods of weighing.

At one time, the interests of D. I. Mendeleev were close to mineralogy, his collection of minerals is carefully preserved even now in the Museum of the Department of Mineralogy of St. Petersburg University, and the rock crystal druse from his table is one of the best exhibits in the quartz showcase. He placed a drawing of this Druse in the first edition of General Chemistry (1903). The student work of D. I. Mendeleev was devoted to isomorphism in minerals.

Periodic Law

Working on the work "Fundamentals of Chemistry", D. I. Mendeleev discovered in February 1869 one of the fundamental laws of nature - the periodic law of chemical elements.

On March 6 (18), 1869, the famous report by D. I. Mendeleev “The relationship of properties with the atomic weight of elements” was read by N. A. Menshutkin at a meeting of the Russian Chemical Society. In the same year, this message in German appeared in the journal Zeitschrift für Chemie, and in 1871, in the journal Annalen der Chemie, D. I. Mendeleev published a detailed publication dedicated to his discovery - “Die periodische Gesetzmässigkeit der Elemente” (Periodic regularity of chemical elements).

Individual scientists in a number of countries, especially in Germany, consider Lothar Meyer to be the co-author of the discovery. The essential difference between these systems is that L. Meyer's table is one of the classification options for chemical elements known by that time; The periodicity identified by D. I. Mendeleev is a system that gave an understanding of the patterns that made it possible to determine the place in it of elements unknown at that time, to predict not only the existence, but also to give their characteristics.

Without giving an idea of ​​the structure of the atom, the periodic law, nevertheless, comes close to this problem, and its solution was undoubtedly found thanks to it - it was this system that guided the researchers, linking the factors he identified with other physical characteristics that were of interest to them. In 1984, Academician V. I. Spitsyn writes: “... The first ideas about the structure of atoms and the nature of chemical valency, developed at the beginning of our century, were based on the regularities of the properties of elements established using the periodic law.”

The German scientist, editor-in-chief of the fundamental manual "Anorganicum" - a combined course of inorganic, physical and analytical chemistry, which has gone through more than ten editions, academician L. Colditz interprets the features of the discovery of D. I. Mendeleev in this way, comparing in the highest degree convincing results of his work with the work of other researchers who were looking for similar patterns:

Developing the ideas of periodicity in 1869-1871, D. I. Mendeleev introduced the concept of the place of an element in the periodic system as a set of its properties in comparison with the properties of other elements. On this basis, in particular, relying on the results of studying the sequence of changes in glass-forming oxides, he corrected the values ​​of the atomic masses of 9 elements (beryllium, indium, uranium, etc.). Predicted the existence in 1870, calculated atomic masses and described the properties of three elements not yet discovered at that time - “ekaaluminum” (discovered in 1875 and named gallium), “ecabor” (discovered in 1879 and named scandium) and “ecasilicon” (discovered in 1885 and named germanium). Then he predicted the existence of eight more elements, including "ditellurium" - polonium (discovered in 1898), "ekaioda" - astatine (discovered in 1942-1943), "ecamarganese" - technetium (discovered in 1937), "dvimanganese "- rhenium (opened in 1925), "ecacesia" - France (opened in 1939).

In 1900, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev and William Ramsay came to the conclusion that it was necessary to include in periodic system elements of a special, zero group of noble gases.

specific volumes. Chemistry of silicates and the glassy state

This section of the work of D. I. Mendeleev, not expressed as the results of the scale of natural science as a whole, nevertheless, like everything in his research practice, being an integral part and milestone on the way to them, and in some cases - their foundation, is extremely important for understanding the development of these studies. As will become clear from what follows, it is closely related to the fundamental components of the scientist's worldview, covering areas from isomorphism and the "fundamentals of chemistry" to the basis of the periodic law, from understanding the nature of solutions to views on the issues of the structure of substances.

The first works of D. I. Mendeleev in 1854 are chemical analyzes of silicates. These were studies of “orthite from Finland” and “pyroxene from Ruskiala in Finland”, about the third analysis of the mineral clay rock - umber - there is information only in the message of S. S. Kutorga in the Russian Geographical Society. D. I. Mendeleev returned to the questions of analytical chemistry of silicates in connection with master's examinations - a written answer concerns the analysis of silicate containing lithium. This small series of works caused the researcher to become interested in isomorphism: the scientist compares the composition of orthite with the compositions of other similar minerals and comes to the conclusion that such a comparison makes it possible to construct an isomorphic series that changes in chemical composition.

In May 1856, D. I. Mendeleev, returning to St. Petersburg from Odessa, prepared a dissertation work under the generalized title "Specific Volumes" - a multifaceted study, a kind of trilogy dedicated to topical issues of chemistry in the middle of the 19th century. A large amount of work (about 20 printed sheets) did not allow publishing it in full. Only the first part was published, entitled, like the entire dissertation, "Specific volumes"; from the second part, only a fragment was later printed in the form of an article “On the connection of certain physical properties of bodies with chemical reactions”; the third part, during the life of D. I. Mendeleev, was not fully published - in an abbreviated form it was presented in 1864 in the fourth edition of the "Technical Encyclopedia" dedicated to glass production. Through the interconnection of the issues covered in the work, D. I. Mendeleev consistently approached the formulation and solution of the most significant problems in his scientific work: identifying patterns in the classification of elements, building a system that characterizes compounds through their composition, structure and properties, creating the prerequisites for the formation of a mature theory of solutions .

In the first part of this work by D. I. Mendeleev, a detailed critical analysis of the literature on the issue, he expressed an original idea about the relationship between the molecular weight and volume of gaseous bodies. The scientist derived a formula for calculating the molecular weight of a gas, that is, for the first time the formulation of the Avogadro-Gerard law was given. Later, the outstanding Russian physical chemist E. V. Biron wrote: “As far as I know, D. I. Mendeleev was the first to believe that we can already talk about Avogadro’s law, since the hypothesis in which the law was first formulated was justified during experimental verification ... ".

Based on the colossal factual material in the section "Specific Volumes and Composition of Silica Compounds", D. I. Mendeleev comes to a broad generalization. Not adhering, unlike many researchers (G. Kopp, I. Schroeder, etc.), to a mechanistic interpretation of the volumes of compounds as the sum of the volumes of the elements that form them, but paying tribute to the results obtained by these scientists, D. I. Mendeleev is looking for non-formal quantitative regularities in volumes, but tries to establish a connection between the quantitative ratios of volumes and the totality of the qualitative characteristics of a substance. Thus he comes to the conclusion that volume, like a crystalline form, is a criterion for the similarity and difference of elements and the compounds they form, and takes a step towards creating a system of elements, directly indicating that the study of volumes "may serve to benefit the natural classification of mineral and organic bodies.

Of particular interest is the part entitled "On the Composition of Silica Compounds". With exceptional depth and thoroughness, D. I. Mendeleev for the first time presented a view on the nature of silicates as compounds similar to alloys of oxide systems. The scientists established a connection between silicates as compounds of the (MeO)x(SiO)x type and "indefinite" compounds of other types, in particular, solutions, which resulted in the correct interpretation of the glassy state.

It was with the observation of glass-making processes that D. I. Mendeleev’s path in science began. Perhaps this fact played a decisive role in his choice; in any case, this topic, which is directly related to the chemistry of silicates, in one form or another naturally comes into contact with many of his other studies.

The place of silicates in nature is succinctly, but with exhaustive clarity, determined by D. I. Mendeleev:

This phrase indicates both the understanding by scientists of the paramount utilitarian significance of silicate materials, the oldest and most common in practice, and the complexity of the chemistry of silicates; therefore, the scientist's interest in this class of substances, in addition to the well-known practical significance, was associated with the development of the most important concept of chemistry - a chemical compound, with the creation of a systematics of compounds, with the solution of the question of the relationship between concepts: chemical compound (definite and indefinite) - solution. In order to realize the importance and scientific significance of the very formulation of the question, its relevance even after more than a century, it is enough to cite the words of one of the experts in the field of silicate chemistry, academician M. M. Schulz, said by him at the XIII Mendeleev Congress, which took place during the 150th anniversary of D. I. Mendeleev: “... Until today, there are no general definitions that would establish a clear relationship between the essence of the concepts of “compound” and “solution”. ... As soon as atoms and molecules interact with each other with an increase in their concentration in a gas, not to mention condensed phases, the question immediately arises at what level of interaction energy and at what numerical ratio between interacting particles can be separated from each other. another concept of “chemical combination of particles” or their “mutual solution”: there are no objective criteria for this, they have not yet been developed, despite the countless number of works on this topic and their apparent simplicity.

The study of glass helped D. I. Mendeleev to better understand the nature of silicic compounds and to see some important features of a chemical compound in general on this peculiar substance.

D. I. Mendeleev devoted about 30 works to the topics of glassmaking, the chemistry of silicates and the glassy state.

Gas research

This theme in the work of D. I. Mendeleev is connected, first of all, with the search for physical causes of periodicity by scientists. Since the properties of the elements were periodically dependent on atomic weights, mass, the researcher thought of the possibility of shedding light on this problem, finding out the causes of gravitational forces and by studying the properties of the medium transmitting them.

The concept of "world ether" had a great influence in the 19th century on a possible solution to this problem. It was assumed that the "ether" that fills interplanetary space is a medium that transmits light, heat and gravity. The study of highly rarefied gases seemed to be a possible means to prove the existence of the named substance, when the properties of "ordinary" matter would no longer be able to hide the properties of "ether".

One of the hypotheses of D. I. Mendeleev boiled down to the fact that the specific state of air gases at high rarefaction could be “ether” or some gas with a very low weight. D. I. Mendeleev wrote on the print from the Fundamentals of Chemistry, on the periodic system of 1871: “Ether is the lightest of all, millions of times”; and in workbook 1874, the scientist expresses even more clearly the train of thought: “At zero pressure, the air has some density, this is the ether!”. However, among his publications of this time, such definite considerations are not expressed ( D. I. Mendeleev. An attempt at a chemical understanding of the world ether. 1902).

In the context of assumptions related to the behavior of a highly rarefied gas (inert - “the lightest chemical element”) in outer space, D. I. Mendeleev relies on information obtained by astronomer A. A. Belopolsky: “The inspector of the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures, be sure to supply me with the following results latest research, including the city of Belopolsky”. And then he directly refers to these data in his conclusions.

Despite the hypothetical orientation of the initial premises of these studies, the main and most important result in the field of physics, obtained thanks to them by D. I. Mendeleev, was the derivation of the ideal gas equation containing the universal gas constant. Also very important, but somewhat premature, was the introduction of the thermodynamic temperature scale proposed by D. I. Mendeleev.

Scientists also chose the right direction to describe the properties of real gases. The virial expansions used by him correspond to the first approximations in the currently known equations for real gases.

In the section related to the study of gases and liquids, D. I. Mendeleev made 54 works.

The doctrine of solutions

In 1905, D. I. Mendeleev will say: “In total, more than four subjects made up my name, the periodic law, the study of gas elasticity, the understanding of solutions as associations, and“ Fundamentals of Chemistry. Here is my wealth. It is not taken from anyone, but produced by me ... ".

Throughout his scientific life, D. I. Mendeleev did not weaken his interest in "solution" topics. His most significant research in this area dates back to the mid-1860s, and the most important - to the 1880s. Nevertheless, the publications of the scientist show that in other periods of his scientific work, he did not interrupt the research that contributed to the creation of the basis of his theory of solutions. The concept of D. I. Mendeleev evolved from very contradictory and imperfect initial ideas about the nature of this phenomenon in close connection with the development of his ideas in other directions, primarily with the theory of chemical compounds.

D. I. Mendeleev showed that a correct understanding of solutions is impossible without taking into account their chemistry, their relationship to certain compounds (the absence of a boundary between those and solutions) and the complex chemical equilibrium in solutions - the development of these three inextricably linked aspects lies in its main significance. However, D. I. Mendeleev himself never called his scientific positions in the field of solutions a theory - not he himself, but his opponents and followers so called what he called "understanding" and "representation", and the works of this direction - "an attempt to illuminate hypothetical view of the entire set of data on solutions” - “... the theory of solutions is still far away”; The scientist saw the main obstacle in its formation "from the side of the theory of the liquid state of matter."

It would be useful to note that, developing this direction, D. I. Mendeleev, at first a priori putting forward the idea of ​​​​a temperature at which the height of the meniscus would be zero, in May 1860 conducted a series of experiments. At a certain temperature, which the experimenter called the "absolute boiling point", heated in a paraffin bath in a sealed volume, liquid silicon chloride (SiCl4) "disappears", turning into steam. In an article devoted to the study, D. I. Mendeleev reports that at the absolute boiling point, the complete transition of liquid into vapor is accompanied by a decrease in surface tension and the heat of evaporation to zero. This work is the first major achievement of the scientist.

It is also important that the theory of electrolyte solutions acquired a satisfactory direction only after accepting the ideas of D. I. Mendeleev, when the hypothesis of the existence of ions in electrolyte solutions was synthesized with the Mendeleev doctrine of solutions.

D. I. Mendeleev devoted 44 works to solutions and hydrates.

Commission for the Consideration of Mediumistic Phenomena

Having had many supporters in Western Europe and America in the middle of the 19th century, by the 1870s they had gained some distribution in the Russian cultural environment - views that imply a search for a solution to the problems of the unknown in turning to vulgar forms of mysticism and esotericism, in particular - to phenomena called for some time paranormal, and in an ordinary, devoid of scientific lexicon - spiritualism, spiritualism or mediumship.

The very process of a spiritualistic séance is presented by the adherents of these movements as a moment of restoration of the temporal unity of matter and energy that had been violated earlier, and thus their separate existence is allegedly confirmed. D. I. Mendeleev wrote about the main “drivers” of interest in this kind of speculation by the contact of the intelligible and the subconscious.

Among the leaders of the circle inclined towards the legitimacy of such an understanding of the world order were: the outstanding Russian chemist A.M. A. N. Aksakov.

Initially, an attempt to expose spiritualism was made by Academician P. L. Chebyshev and Professor M. F. Zion, brother and collaborator of the famous physician I. F. Tsion, one of the teachers of I. P. Pavlov (sessions with the "medium" Jung). In the mid-1870s, on the initiative of D. I. Mendeleev, the still young Russian Physical Society sharply criticized spiritualism. On May 6, 1875, a decision was made to "create a commission to check all the 'phenomena' that accompany séances."

Experiments to study the actions of "mediums", the Petty brothers and Mrs. Kleyer, sent by W. Crookes at the request of A. N. Aksakov, began in the spring of 1875. A. M. Butlerov, N. P. Wagner and A. N. Aksakov acted as opponents. The first meeting - May 7 (chairman - F. F. Ewald), the second - May 8. After that, the work of the commission was interrupted until the fall - the third meeting took place only on October 27, and already on October 28, the teacher, member of the Moscow Duma Fedor Fedorovich Ewald, who was a member of the first composition of the commission, writes to D. I. Mendeleev: “... reading books compiled by Mr. A N. Aksakov and other similar rages made me resolutely disgusted with everything related to spiritualism, mediumship too ”- he withdraws from participation. To replace him, despite the heavy pedagogical workload, the physicists D.K. Bobylev and D.A. Lachinov were included in the work of the commission.

At different stages of the work of the commission (spring of 1875, autumn - winter of 1875-1876), its members included: D.K. Bobylev, I.I. Borgman, N.P. Bulygin, N.A. Gezekhus, N. G. Egorov, A. S. Elenev, S. I. Kovalevsky, K. D. Kraevich, D. Lachinov, D. Mendeleev, N. P. Petrov, F. F. Petrushevsky, P. P. Fander- Fleet, A. I. Khmolovsky, F. F. Ewald.

The commission applied a number of methods and technological techniques that excluded the use of physical laws for manipulations by the "magnetizers": pyramidal and manometric tables, elimination of external factors that prevent a full perception of the experimental environment, allowing for increased illusions, distortion of the perception of reality. The result of the commission's activity was the identification of a number of special misleading techniques, the exposure of obvious deception, the statement of the absence of any effects under the correct conditions that prevent an ambiguous interpretation of the phenomenon - spiritualism was recognized as a consequence of the use of psychological factors by "mediums" to control the minds of the inhabitants - superstition .

The work of the commission and the controversy surrounding the subject of its consideration evoked a lively response not only in periodicals, which, on the whole, took the side of sanity. D. I. Mendeleev, however, in the final edition warns journalists against a frivolous, one-sided and incorrect interpretation of the role and influence of superstition. P. D. Boborykin, N. S. Leskov, many others, and, above all, F. M. Dostoevsky gave their assessment. Critical remarks of the latter are more related not to spiritualism as such, which he himself opposed, but to the rationalistic views of D. I. Mendeleev. F. M. Dostoevsky points out: “when “the desire to believe”, the desire can be given a new weapon in the hands.” At the beginning of the 21st century, this reproach remains valid: “I will not delve into the description of the technical methods that we subtracted from the scientific treatises of Mendeleev ... Having applied some of them in experience, we found that we can establish a special connection with some incomprehensible for us , but completely real beings."

Summing up, D. I. Mendeleev points to the difference rooted in the initial moral position of the researcher: in “conscientious delusion” or conscious deceit. It is moral principles that he puts at the forefront in the overall assessment of all aspects and the phenomenon itself, its interpretation and, first of all, the scientist's beliefs, independent of his direct activity - and should he have them at all? In response to a letter from the “Mother of the Family”, who accused the scientist of planting crude materialism, he declares that “he is ready to serve, one way or another, as a means to ensure that there are fewer coarse materialists and hypocrites, and there would be more people who truly understand that between there is a primordial unity between science and moral principles.”

In the work of D. I. Mendeleev, this topic, like everything in the circle of his interests, is naturally connected with several areas of his scientific activity at once: psychology, philosophy, pedagogy, popularization of knowledge, gas research, aeronautics, meteorology, etc.; the fact that it lies at this intersection is also shown by the publication summarizing the activities of the commission. While the study of gases indirectly, through hypotheses about the "world ether", for example, is related to the "hypothetical" factors accompanying the main theme of the events under consideration (including air vibrations), an indication of the connection with meteorology and aeronautics may lead to a reasonable bewilderment. However, it was not by chance that they appeared in this list in the form of related topics, “present” already on title page"Materials", and the words from the public readings of D. I. Mendeleev in the Salt Town best answer the question about meteorology:

Aeronautics

Dealing with aeronautics, D. I. Mendeleev, firstly, continues his research in the field of gases and meteorology, and secondly, he develops the themes of his works that come into contact with the topics of environmental resistance and shipbuilding.

In 1875, he developed a project for a stratospheric balloon with a volume of about 3600 m³ with a hermetic gondola, implying the possibility of rising into the upper atmosphere (the first such flight into the stratosphere was carried out by O. Picard only in 1924). D. I. Mendeleev also designed a controlled balloon with engines. In 1878, the scientist, while in France, made an ascent on a tethered balloon by Henri Giffard.

In the summer of 1887, D. I. Mendeleev made his famous flight. This became possible thanks to the mediation of the Russian Technical Society in matters of equipment. An important role in the preparation of this event was played by V. I. Sreznevsky and, to a special extent, by the inventor and aeronaut S. K. Dzhevetsky.

D. I. Mendeleev, talking about this flight, explains why the RTO turned to him with such an initiative: “The technical society, inviting me to make observations from a balloon during a total solar eclipse, wanted, of course, to serve knowledge and saw that those concepts and the role of balloons that I had previously developed.

The circumstances of the preparation for the flight once again speak of D. I. Mendeleev as a brilliant experimenter (here we can recall what he believed: “A professor who only reads a course, but does not work in science and does not move forward, does not only useless, but directly harmful. It will instill in the beginners the deadening spirit of classicism, scholasticism, and will kill their living striving.") D. I. Mendeleev was very fascinated by the possibility of observing the solar corona for the first time from a balloon during a total eclipse. He suggested using hydrogen to fill the balloon, rather than light gas, which made it possible to rise to a great height, which expanded the possibilities of observation. And here again, cooperation with D. A. Lachinov, who at about the same time developed an electrolytic method for producing hydrogen, the wide possibilities of using which D. I. Mendeleev points out in Fundamentals of Chemistry, had an effect.

The naturalist assumed that the study of the solar corona should provide a key to understanding issues related to the origin of the worlds. From cosmogonic hypotheses, his attention was attracted by the idea that appeared at that time about the origin of bodies from cosmic dust: “Then the sun, with all its strength, itself turns out to be dependent on invisibly small bodies rushing in space, and all the strength of the solar system is drawn from this infinite source and depends only from the organization, from the addition of these smallest units into a complex individual system. Then the “crown”, perhaps, is a condensed mass of these small cosmic bodies that form the sun and support its strength.” In comparison with another hypothesis - about the origin of the bodies of the solar system from the substance of the sun - he expresses the following considerations: verified. One must only not be content with one thing that has already been established and recognized, one must not become petrified in it, one must study further and deeper, more precisely and in more detail, all the phenomena that can contribute to the elucidation of these fundamental questions. The Crown will certainly help this study in many ways.”

This flight attracted the attention of the general public. War Department provided the Russian balloon with a volume of 700 m³. I. E. Repin arrives in Boblovo on March 6, and, following D. I. Mendeleev and K. D. Kraevich, he goes to Klin. These days they made sketches.

On August 7, at the launch site - a wasteland in the north-west of the city, near the Yamskaya Sloboda, despite the early hour, huge crowds of spectators gather. Pilot-aeronaut A. M. Kovanko was supposed to fly with D. I. Mendeleev, but due to the rain that had passed the day before, the humidity increased, the balloon got wet - he was not able to lift two people. At the insistence of D. I. Mendeleev, his companion left the basket, having previously read a lecture to the scientist on controlling the ball, showing what and how to do. Mendeleev went into flight alone. Subsequently, he commented on his determination:

The balloon could not rise as high as the conditions of the proposed experiments required - the sun was partially obscured by clouds. In the researcher's diary, the first entry falls at 6:55, 20 minutes after takeoff. The scientist notes the readings of the aneroid - 525 mm and the air temperature - 1.2 °: “It smells of gas. Above the clouds. It is clear all around (that is, at the level of the balloon). The cloud hid the sun. Already three miles. I’ll wait for self-lowering.” At 07:00 10-12 m: height 3.5 versts, aneroid pressure 510-508 mm. The ball covered a distance of about 100 km, rising to a maximum height of 3.8 km; having flown over Taldom at 8:45 a.m., it began to descend at approximately 9:00 a.m. Between Kalyazin and Pereslavl-Zalessky, near the village of Spas-Ugol (the estate of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin), a successful landing took place. Already on the ground, at 9:20, D. I. Mendeleev enters in his notebook the readings of the aneroid - 750 mm, the air temperature - 16.2 °. During the flight, the scientist eliminated a malfunction in the control of the main valve of the balloon, which showed a good knowledge of the practical side of aeronautics.

The opinion was expressed that a successful flight was a combination of happy accidental circumstances - the aeronaut could not agree with this - repeating the well-known words of A. V. Suvorov “happiness, God have mercy, happiness”, he adds: “Yes, we need something besides him. It seems to me that the most important thing, besides the launching tools - valve, hydron, ballast and anchor, is a calm and conscious attitude to business. Just as beauty responds, if not always, then most often to a high degree of expediency, so luck responds to a calm and completely judicious attitude towards ends and means.

The International Committee for Aeronautics in Paris awarded D. I. Mendeleev a medal of the French Academy of Aerostatic Meteorology for this flight.

The scientist evaluates his experience as follows: “If my flight from Klin, which added nothing in relation to the knowledge of the “crown”, would serve to arouse interest in meteorological observations from balloons inside Russia, if, in addition, it would increase the general confidence in that even a novice can fly in balloons with comfort, then I would not fly in vain through the air on August 7, 1887.

D. I. Mendeleev showed great interest in aircraft heavier than air, he was interested in one of the first aircraft with propellers, invented by A. F. Mozhaisky. In the fundamental monograph by D. I. Mendeleev, devoted to the issues of environmental resistance, there is a section on aeronautics; in general, scientists on this topic, combining in his work the indicated direction of research with the development of research in the field of meteorology, wrote 23 articles.

Shipbuilding. Development of the Far North

Representing the development of research on gases and liquids, the works of D. I. Mendeleev on environmental resistance and aeronautics are continued in works devoted to shipbuilding and the development of Arctic navigation.

This part of the scientific work of D. I. Mendeleev is most determined by his cooperation with Admiral S. O. Makarov - consideration of the scientific information obtained by the latter in oceanological expeditions, their joint work related to the creation of an experimental pool, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bwhich belongs to Dmitry Ivanovich, who accepted active participation in this matter at all stages of its implementation - from the solution of design, technical and organizational measures - to construction, and directly related to the testing of ship models, after the pool was finally built in 1894. D. I. Mendeleev enthusiastically supported the efforts of S. O. Makarov aimed at creating a large Arctic icebreaker.

When, in the late 1870s, D. I. Mendeleev was studying the resistance of the medium, he expressed the idea of ​​building an experimental pool for testing ships. But only in 1893, at the request of N.M. Chikhachev, the head of the Naval Ministry, the scientist draws up a note “On the pool for testing ship models” and “Draft regulations on the pool”, where he interprets the prospect of creating a pool as part of a scientific and technical program that implies not only a solution tasks of shipbuilding of a military-technical and commercial profile, but also enabling the implementation of scientific research.

Being engaged in the study of solutions, D. I. Mendeleev in the late 1880s - early 1890s showed great interest in the results of studies of the density of sea water, which were obtained by S. O. Makarov in a circumnavigation on the Vityaz corvette in 1887-1889 years. These most valuable data were extremely highly appreciated by D. I. Mendeleev, who included them in a summary table of water density values ​​at different temperatures, which he cites in his article "Change in the density of water when heated."

Continuing the interaction with S. O. Makarov, begun in the development of gunpowder for naval artillery, D. I. Mendeleev is included in the organization of an icebreaking expedition to the Arctic Ocean.

The idea put forward by S. O. Makarov of this expedition resonated with D. I. Mendeleev, who saw in such an undertaking a real way to solve many of the most important economic problems: the connection of the Bering Strait with other Russian seas would mark the beginning of the development of the Northern Sea Route, which made the regions of Siberia accessible and the Far North.

The initiatives were supported by S. Yu. Witte, and already in the autumn of 1897 the government decided to allocate the construction of an icebreaker. D. I. Mendeleev was included in the commission that dealt with issues related to the construction of an icebreaker, of several projects of which the one proposed by the British company was preferred. The world's first Arctic icebreaker, built at the Armstrong Whitworth shipyard, was named after the legendary conqueror of Siberia - Yermak, and on October 29, 1898, she was launched on the Tyne River in England.

In 1898, D. I. Mendeleev and S. O. Makarov turned to S. Yu. Witte with a memorandum “On the study of the Northern Polar Ocean during the trial voyage of the Ermak icebreaker”, which outlined the program of the expedition planned for the summer of 1899 , in the implementation of astronomical, magnetic, meteorological, hydrological, chemical and biological research.

The model of an icebreaker under construction in the experimental shipbuilding basin of the Maritime Ministry was subjected to tests, which included, in addition to determining the speed and power, a hydrodynamic assessment of propellers and a study of stability, resistance to rolling loads, to mitigate the effects of which a valuable technical improvement was introduced, proposed by D. I. Mendeleev, and for the first time used in the new ship.

In 1901-1902, D. I. Mendeleev created a project for an Arctic expeditionary icebreaker. The scientist developed a high-latitude "industrial" sea route, which meant the passage of ships near the North Pole.

D. I. Mendeleev devoted 36 works to the topic of the development of the Far North.

Metrology

Mendeleev was the forerunner of modern metrology, in particular, chemical metrology. He is the author of a number of works on metrology. He created the exact theory of scales, developed the best designs of the rocker arm and the cage, and proposed the most accurate methods of weighing.

Science begins as soon as one begins to measure. Exact science is unthinkable without measure.

D. I. Mendeleev

In 1893, D. I. Mendeleev created the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures (now the All-Russian Research Institute of Metrology named after D. I. Mendeleev);

On October 8, 1901, on the initiative of Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, the first verification tent in Ukraine was opened in Kharkov for reconciliation and branding of trade measures and weights. Not only the history of metrology and standardization in Ukraine, but also more than a hundred-year history of the NSC "Institute of Metrology" begins from this event.

powder making

There are a number of conflicting opinions about the works of D. I. Mendeleev, dedicated to smokeless powder. Documentary information speaks of their next development.

In May 1890, on behalf of the Naval Ministry, Vice-Admiral N. M. Chikhachev suggested that D. I. Mendeleev "serve the scientific formulation of the Russian gunpowder business", to which the scientist, who had already left the university, expressed his consent in a letter and pointed out the need for a business trip abroad with the inclusion of specialists in explosives - Professor Mine officer classes I. M. Cheltsov, and the manager of the pyroxylin plant L. G. Fedotov, - the organization of an explosives laboratory.

In London, D. I. Mendeleev met with scientists with whom he enjoyed invariable authority: with F. Abel (chairman of the Committee on Explosives, who discovered cordite), J. Dewar (member of the committee, co-author of cordite), W. Ramsay, W. Anderson , A. Tillo and L. Mond, R. Jung, J. Stokes and E. Frankland. Having visited the laboratory of W. Ramsay, the factory of rapid-fire weapons and gunpowder Nordenfeld-Maxim, where he himself carried out tests, the test site of the Woolwich Arsenal, he notes in his notebook: “Smokeless gunpowder: pyroxylin + nitroglycerin + castor oil; pull, cut scales and wire columns. They gave samples ... "). Next is Paris. French pyroxylin gunpowder was strictly classified (the technology was published only in the 1930s). He met with L. Pasteur, P. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, A. Moissan, A. Le Chatelier, M. Berthelot (one of the leaders of the work on gunpowder), - with experts in explosives A. Gauthier and E. Sarro (director of the Central Gunpowder laboratories of France) and others. The scientist turned to the Minister of War of France, Ch. L. Freycinet, for admission to the factories - two days later, E. Sarro received D. I. Mendeleev in his laboratory, showed a test of gunpowder; Arnoux and E. Sarro gave a sample (2 g) “for personal use”, but its composition and properties showed it to be unsuitable for large-caliber artillery.

In mid-July 1890 in St. Petersburg, D. I. Mendeleev pointed out the need for a laboratory (it was opened only in the summer of 1891), and he himself, with N. A. Menshutkin, N. P. Fedorov, L. N. Shishkov, A. R. Shulyachenko, began experiments at the university. In the autumn of 1890, at the Okhta plant, he participated in the testing of smokeless powder on various types of weapons - he requested technology. In December, D. I. Mendeleev obtained soluble nitrocellulose, and in January 1891 - one that “dissolves like sugar”, which he called pyrocollodium.

D. I. Mendeleev attached great importance to the industrial and economic side of powder making, the use of only domestic raw materials; studied the production of sulfuric acid from local pyrites at the P. K. Ushkov plant in the city of Elabuga, Vyatka province (where later they began to produce gunpowder in a small volume), - cotton "ends" from Russian enterprises. Production began at the Shlisselburg plant near St. Petersburg. In the autumn of 1892, with the participation of the chief inspector of naval artillery, Admiral S. O. Makarov, pyrocollodic gunpowder was tested, which was highly appreciated by military specialists. In a year and a half, under the leadership of D. I. Mendeleev, the technology of pyrocollodium was developed - the basis of domestic smokeless powder, which surpasses foreign ones in its qualities. After testing in 1893, Admiral S. O. Makarov confirmed the suitability of the new "smokeless potion" for use in guns of all calibers.

D. I. Mendeleev was engaged in powder making until 1898. Attracting the Bondyuzhinsky and Okhtinsky plants, the Marine Pyroxylin Plant in St. Petersburg, resulted in a confrontation between departmental and patent interests. S. O. Makarov, defending the priority of D. I. Mendeleev, notes his “major services in resolving the issue of the type of smokeless powder” for the Naval Ministry, from where the scientist left the position of consultant in 1895; he seeks the removal of secrecy - "Sea Collection" under the heading "On pyrocollodic smokeless powder" (1895, 1896) publishes his articles, where comparing various gunpowder with pyrocollodium in 12 parameters, states its obvious advantages, expressed - the constancy of the composition, uniformity, exception " traces of detonation"

The French engineer Messen, none other than the expert of the Okhta gunpowder factory, interested in his pyroxylin technology, also obtained from interested manufacturers the recognition of the identity of the latter to pyrocollodic - D. I. Mendeleev. Instead of developing domestic research, they bought foreign patents - the right to "authorship" and the production of Mendeleev gunpowder was appropriated by the junior lieutenant of the US Navy D. Bernado, who was then in St. Petersburg (eng. John Baptiste Bernadou), "part-time" employee of ONI (eng. Office of Naval Intelligence- Office of Naval Intelligence), who obtained the recipe, and, having never done this before, suddenly from 1898 "carried away with the development" of smokeless gunpowder, and in 1900 received a patent for "Colloid explosives and its production" (Eng. colloid explosive and process of making the same) - pyrocolloid gunpowder ..., in his publications he reproduces the conclusions of D. I. Mendeleev. And Russia, “according to its eternal tradition”, during the First World War bought it in huge quantities, this gunpowder, in America, and sailors are still indicated as inventors - Lieutenant D. Bernadou and Captain J. Convers (eng. George Albert Converse).

Dmitry Ivanovich devoted 68 articles to research on the topic of powder making, based on his fundamental works on the study of aqueous solutions, and directly related to them.

About electrolytic dissociation

There is an opinion that D. I. Mendeleev “did not accept” the concept of electrolytic dissociation, that he allegedly misinterpreted it, or even did not understand it at all ...

D. I. Mendeleev continued to show interest in the development of the theory of solutions in the late 1880s - 1890s. This topic acquired special significance and topicality after the formation and successful application of the theory of electrolytic dissociation (S. Arrhenius, W. Ostwald, J. van't Hoff). D. I. Mendeleev closely watched the development of this new theory, but refrained from any categorical assessment of it.

D. I. Mendeleev considers in detail some of the arguments that supporters of the theory of electrolytic dissociation turn to when proving the very fact of the decomposition of salts into ions, including a decrease in the freezing point and other factors determined by the properties of solutions. These and other issues related to the understanding of this theory are devoted to his “Note on the dissociation of solutes”. He talks about the possibility of compounds of solvents with solutes and their influence on the properties of solutions. Without categorically stating, D. I. Mendeleev, at the same time, points out the need not to discount the possibility of a multilateral consideration of processes: “before recognizing dissociation into M + X ions in a salt solution MX, one should follow the spirit of all information about solutions, search for aqueous solutions of MX salts by the action of H2O giving MOH + HX particles, or the dissociation of MX hydrates ( n+ 1) H2O to MOH hydrates m H2O + HX( n-m) H2O or even directly hydrates MX n H2O into individual molecules”.

From this it follows that D. I. Mendeleev did not indiscriminately deny the theory itself, but to a greater extent pointed out the need for its development and understanding, taking into account the consistently developed theory of the interaction of a solvent and a solute. In the notes of the section "Fundamentals of Chemistry" devoted to the topic, he writes: "... for persons wishing to study chemistry in more detail, it is very instructive to delve into the totality of information related to this, which can be found in the "Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie" for the years since 1888 ".

In the late 1880s, intense discussions unfolded between supporters and opponents of the theory of electrolytic dissociation. The controversy became most acute in England, and it was connected precisely with the works of D. I. Mendeleev. Data on dilute solutions were the basis of the arguments of the proponents of the theory, while opponents turned to the results of studies of solutions in broad areas concentrations. The greatest attention was given to solutions of sulfuric acid, well studied by D. I. Mendeleev. Many British chemists consistently developed the point of view of D. I. Mendeleev on the presence of important points in the “composition-property” diagrams. This information was used in criticizing the theory of electrolytic dissociation by H. Crompton, E. Pickering, G. E. Armstrong, and other scientists. Their indication of the point of view of D. I. Mendeleev and data on sulfuric acid solutions in the form of the main arguments of their correctness was regarded by many scientists, including German ones, as a contrast to the “Mendeleev’s hydrate theory” of the theory of electrolytic dissociation. This led to a biased and sharply critical perception of the positions of D. I. Mendeleev, for example, by the same V. Nernst.

While these data refer to very complex cases of equilibria in solutions, when, in addition to dissociation, sulfuric acid and water molecules form complex polymer ions. In concentrated solutions of sulfuric acid, parallel processes of electrolytic dissociation and association of molecules are observed. Even the presence of various hydrates in the H2O - H2SO4 system, revealed due to electrical conductivity (according to the jumps in the line "composition - electrical conductivity"), does not give grounds to deny the validity of the theory of electrolytic dissociation. Requires awareness of the fact of simultaneous association of molecules and dissociation of ions.

Mendeleev - economist and futurist

D. I. Mendeleev was also an outstanding economist who substantiated the main directions of Russia's economic development. All his activities, be it the most abstract theoretical research, be it rigorous technological research, by all means, in one way or another, resulted in practical implementation, which always meant taking into account and a good understanding of economic meaning.

D. I. Mendeleev saw the future of Russian industry in the development of a communal and artel spirit. Specifically, he proposed to reform the Russian community so that it would carry out agricultural work in the summer, and factory work in its communal factory in the winter. Within individual plants and factories, it was proposed to develop an artel organization of labor. A factory or plant attached to each community - "this is what alone can make the Russian people rich, industrious and educated."

Together with S. Yu. Witte took part in the development of the Customs Tariff of 1891 in Russia.

D. I. Mendeleev was an ardent supporter of protectionism and the economic independence of Russia. In his works “Letters on Factories”, “Explanatory Tariff ...”, D. I. Mendeleev stood on the positions of protecting Russian industry from competition from Western countries, linking the development of Russian industry with a common customs policy. The scientist noted the injustice of the economic order, which allows countries that process raw materials to reap the fruits of the labor of workers in countries that supply raw materials. This order, in his opinion, "gives all the advantage to the haves over the have-nots."

In his appeal to the public - "Justification of protectionism" (1897) and in three letters to Nicholas II (1897, 1898, 1901 - "written and sent at the request of S. Yu. Witte, who said that he alone was unable to convince") D. I. Mendeleev sets out some of his economic views.

He points to the expediency of allowing foreign investment to enter the national industry without hindrance. The scientist regards capital as a "temporary form" into which "certain aspects of industry have poured into our age"; to some extent, like many contemporaries, he idealizes it, implying the function of a carrier of progress behind it: “Wherever it comes from, it will give birth to new capital everywhere, it will bypass the entire limited globe of the Earth, bring peoples together and then, probably, it will lose its modern significance” . According to D. I. Mendeleev, foreign investments should be used, as their own Russian investments are accumulated, as a temporary means to achieve national goals.

Moreover, the scientist notes the need to nationalize several vital regulatory economic components and the need to create an education system as part of the state's patronage policy.

Ural expedition

Speaking about the “third service to the Motherland”, the scientist emphasizes the importance of this expedition. In March 1899, D. I. Mendeleev, in a memorandum to Comrade Minister of Finance V. N. Kokovtsev, makes recommendations. He proposes to transfer state-owned factories corresponding to the interests of defense to the Military and Naval Ministry; other enterprises of this kind, state-owned mining plants - into private hands in the form of competition potential, to reduce prices, and to the treasury, which owns ores and forests - income. The development of the Urals is hampered by the fact that “there are almost entirely only large entrepreneurs operating there, who have seized everything and everything for themselves alone”; to curb them - to develop "over large, many small enterprises"; accelerate the construction of railways.

On behalf of the Minister of Finance S. Yu. Witte and the director of the Department of Industry and Trade V. I. Kovalevsky, the leadership of the expedition was entrusted to D. I. Mendeleev; he appeals to the owners of private factories in the Urals, asking them to "contribute to the study of the state of the iron business."

Despite the malaise, the scientist did not refuse the trip. The expedition was attended by: Head of the Department of Mineralogy of St. Petersburg University, Professor P. A. Zemyatchensky, a well-known specialist in Russian iron ores; assistant to the head of the scientific and technical laboratory of the Naval Ministry - chemist S. P. Vukolov; KN Egorov is an employee of the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures. D. I. Mendeleev instructed the last two to “inspect many Ural factories and carry out complete magnetic measurements” to identify anomalies indicating the presence of iron ore. K. N. Egorov was also entrusted with the study of the Ekibastuz coal deposit, which, according to D. I. Mendeleev, is very important for the Ural metallurgy. The expedition was accompanied by a representative of the Ministry of State Property N. A. Salarev and the secretary of the Permanent Advisory Office of Iron Workers V. V. Mamontov. The personal routes of the participants of the Ural expedition were determined by the tasks.

D. I. Mendeleev from Perm followed the following route: Kizel - Chusovaya - Kushva - Mount Blagodat - Nizhny Tagil - Mount High - Yekaterinburg - Tyumen, by steamer - to Tobolsk. From Tobolsk by steamboat - to Tyumen and further: Yekaterinburg - Bilimbaevo - Yekaterinburg - Kyshtym. After Kyshtym, D. I. Mendeleev “bleeds throatily” - a relapse of an old ailment, he lingers in Zlatoust, hoping to rest and “go back to the factories”, but there was no improvement, and he returned to Boblovo through Ufa and Samara. D. I. Mendeleev noted that even in Yekaterinburg he had received a good idea of ​​the state of the iron industry in the Urals.

In his report to S. Yu. Witte, D. I. Mendeleev indicates the reasons for the slow development of metallurgy, and measures to overcome it: “Russia's influence on the entire west of Siberia and on the steppe center of Asia can and should be carried out through the Ural region.” D. I. Mendeleev saw the reason for the stagnation of the industry of the Urals in the socio-economic archaism: “... It is necessary with particular perseverance to end all the remnants of the landlord relationship that still exists everywhere in the Urals in the form of peasants assigned to factories.” The administration interferes with small enterprises, but "the true development of industry is inconceivable without the free competition of small and medium-sized breeders with large ones." D. I. Mendeleev points out: the monopolists patronized by the government slow down the rise of the region, - “expensive prices, contentment with what has been achieved and a stop in development.” He would later comment that it cost him "a lot of toil and trouble".

In the Urals, his idea of ​​​​underground coal gasification, expressed by him back in the Donbass (1888), and to which he returned repeatedly ("Combustible materials" - 1893, "Fundamentals of the factory industry" - 1897, "The Doctrine of Industry" - 1900) was justified -1901).

Participation in the study of the Ural iron industry is one of the most important stages in the activity of Mendeleev the economist. In his work "To the Knowledge of Russia" he will say: "In my life I had to take part in the fate of three ... cases: oil, coal and iron ore." From the Ural expedition, the scientist brought invaluable material, which he later used in his works “The Teaching about Industry” and “To the Knowledge of Russia”.

To the knowledge of Russia

In 1906, D. I. Mendeleev, being a witness to the first Russian revolution, and sensitively reacting to what was happening, seeing the approach big changes, writes his last major work "Towards the knowledge of Russia". An important place in this work is occupied by questions of population; in his conclusions, the scientist relies on a rigorous analysis of the results of the population census. D. I. Mendeleev processes statistical tables with his characteristic thoroughness and the skill of a researcher who has complete command of the mathematical apparatus and methods of calculation.

A rather important component was the calculation of the two centers of Russia present in the book - the surface and the population. For Russia, the clarification of the territorial center of the state - the most important geopolitical parameter, was made for the first time by D. I. Mendeleev. The scientist attached to the publication a map of a new projection, which reflected the idea of ​​a unified industrial and cultural development of the European and Asian parts of the country, which was supposed to serve as a rapprochement between the two centers.

Mendeleev on demographic growth

The scientist most definitely shows his attitude to this issue in the context of his convictions as a whole with the following words: "The highest goal of politics is most clearly expressed in the development of conditions for human reproduction."

At the beginning of the 20th century, Mendeleev, noting that the population Russian Empire has doubled over the past forty years, calculated that by 2050 its number, while maintaining the existing growth, will reach 800 million people. For what is actually available, see the article Demographic situation in Russian Federation.

Objective historical circumstances (primarily wars, revolutions and their consequences) made adjustments to the scientist’s calculations, however, the indicators he came to regarding regions and peoples, for one reason or another, to a lesser extent affected by these unpredictable factors, confirm the validity of his predictions.

Three services to the motherland

In a private letter to S. Yu. Witte, which remained unsent, D. I. Mendeleev, stating and evaluating his many years of activity, calls "three services to the Motherland":

These directions in the multifaceted work of the scientist are closely related to each other.

The logical-thematic paradigm of the scientist's creativity

All scientific, philosophical and journalistic works of D. I. Mendeleev are proposed to be considered integrally - in comparing the sections of this great heritage both in terms of the “weight” of individual disciplines, trends and topics in it, and in the interaction of its main and particular components.

In the 1970s, Professor R. B. Dobrotin, Director of the Museum-Archive of D. I. Mendeleev (LSU), developed a method that implies such a holistic approach to assessing the work of D. I. Mendeleev, taking into account the specific historical conditions in which it developed. For many years, studying and consistently comparing sections of this huge code, R. B. Dobrotin, step by step, revealed the internal logical connection of all its small and large parts; This was facilitated by the opportunity to work directly with the materials of the unique archive, and communication with many recognized experts in various disciplines. The untimely death of a talented researcher did not allow him to fully develop this interesting undertaking, which in many ways anticipates the possibilities of both modern scientific methodology and new information technologies.

Built like a family tree, the scheme structurally reflects the thematic classification and allows us to trace the logical and morphological connections between the various areas of D. I. Mendeleev’s work.

The analysis of numerous logical connections allows us to identify 7 main areas of activity of the scientist - 7 sectors:

• Periodic law, pedagogy, education.
• Organic chemistry, the doctrine of the limiting forms of compounds.
• Solutions, oil technology and the economics of the oil industry.
• Physics of liquids and gases, meteorology, aeronautics, environmental resistance, shipbuilding, development of the Far North.
• Etalons, questions of metrology.
• Solid state chemistry, solid fuel and glass technology.
• Biology, medical chemistry, agrochemistry, agriculture.

Each sector corresponds not to one topic, but to a logical chain of related topics - a “stream of scientific activity”, which has a certain focus; the chains are not completely isolated - there are numerous connections between them (lines crossing sector boundaries).

Thematic headings are presented as circles (31). The number inside the circle corresponds to the number of papers on the topic. Central - corresponds to the group of early works of D. I. Mendeleev, from where research in various fields originates. Lines connecting circles show connections between topics.

Circles are distributed in three concentric rings, corresponding to three aspects of activity: internal - theoretical work; secondary - technology, technique and applied issues; external - articles, books and speeches on economics, industry and education. The block, located behind the outer ring, and uniting 73 works on general issues of a socio-economic and philosophical nature, closes the scheme. Such a construction makes it possible to observe how a scientist in his work moves from one or another scientific idea to its technical development (lines from the inner ring), and from it to solving economic problems (lines from the middle ring).

The absence of symbols in the publication “Chronicles of the life and work of D. I. Mendeleev” (“Nauka”, 1984), on the creation of which at the first stage R. B. Dobrotin also worked († 1980), is also due to the absence of a semantic-semiotic connection with the proposed system scientists. However, in the preface of this informative book, it is noted that the present "work can be considered as a sketch scientific biography scientist."

D. I. Mendeleev and the world

The scientific interests and contacts of D. I. Mendeleev were very wide, he went on business trips many times, made many private trips and travels

He climbed into sky-high heights and descended into mines, visited hundreds of plants and factories, universities, institutes and scientific societies, met, argued, collaborated and simply talked, shared his thoughts with hundreds of scientists, artists, peasants, entrepreneurs, workers and craftsmen, writers , statesmen and politicians. I took many photographs, bought a lot of books and reproductions. The almost completely preserved library includes about 20 thousand publications, and the partially surviving huge archive and collection of pictorial and reproduction materials contain a lot of heterogeneous printing units, diaries, workbooks, notebooks, manuscripts and extensive correspondence with Russian and foreign scientists, public figures and others. correspondents.

Across European Russia, the Caucasus, the Urals and Siberia

Novgorod, Yuryev, Pskov, Dvinsk, Koenigsberg, Vilna, Eidkunen, Kyiv, Serdobol, Imatra, Kexholm, Priozersk, St. Petersburg, Kronstadt, Myakishevo, Dorohovo, Konchanskoye, Borovichi, Mlevo, Konstantinovo, Yaroslavl, Tver, Klin, Boblovo, Tarakanovo, Shakhmatovo, Moscow, Kuskovo, Tula, Eagle, Tambov, Kromy, Saratov, Slavyansk, Lisichansk, Tsaritsyn, Kramatorsk, Loskutovka, Lugansk, Stupki, Marievka, Bakhmut, Golubovka, Khatsapetovka, Kamenskaya, Yashikovskaya, Gorlovka, Debaltsevo, Yasinovatoe, Yuzovka, Khartsyzskaya, Makeevka, Simbirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Bogodukhovka, Grushevka, Maksimovka, Nikolaev, Odessa, Kherson, Rostov-on-Don, Simferopol, Tikhoretskaya, Yekaterinodar, Novorossiysk, Astrakhan, Mineralnye Vody, Pyatigorsk, Kizlyar, Grozny, Petrovsk- Port, Temir-Khan-Shura, Derbent, Sukhum, Kutais, Mtskheta, Shemakha, Surakhany, Poti, Tiflis, Baku, Batum, Elizavetpol, Kizel, Tobolsk, Chusovoy, Kushva, Perm, Nizhny Tagil, Kazan, Elabuga, Tyumen, Yekaterinburg , Kyshtym, Zlatoust, Chelyabinsk, Miass, Samara

Foreign travel and travel

Visiting in some years many times - 32 times was in Germany, 33 - in France, in Switzerland - 10 times, 6 times - in Italy, three times - in Holland, and twice - in Belgium, in Austria-Hungary - 8 times, 11 times - in England, was in Spain, Sweden and the USA. Regularly passing through Poland (at that time - part of the Russian Empire) to Western Europe, he was there twice on special visits.

Here are the cities in these countries, which are in one way or another connected with the life and work of D. I. Mendeleev:

Confession

Awards, academies and societies

• Order of St. Vladimir, 1st class
• Order of St. Vladimir II degree
• Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky
• Order of the White Eagle
• Order of St. Anne, 1st class
• Order of St. Anne II degree
• Order of St. Stanislaus, 1st class
• Legion of Honor

The scientific authority of D. I. Mendeleev was enormous. The list of his titles and titles includes more than a hundred titles. Practically by all Russian and most respected foreign academies, universities and scientific societies, he was elected as an honorary member. Nevertheless, he signed his works, private and official appeals without indicating his involvement in them: “D. Mendeleev" or "Professor Mendeleev", rarely mentioning any honorary titles assigned to him.

D. I. Mendeleev - doctor of the Turin Academy of Sciences (1893) and Cambridge University (1894), doctor of chemistry at St. Petersburg University (1865), doctor of law at Edinburgh (1884) and Princeton (1896) universities, University of Glasgow (1904), doctor civil law from the University of Oxford (1894), PhD and MA from the University of Göttingen (1887); member of the Royal Societies (Royal Society): London (Royal Society for the Promotion of Natural Sciences, 1892), Edinburgh (1888), Dublin (1886); member of the Academies of Sciences: Roman (Accademia dei Lincei, 1893), Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden (1905), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1889), National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Boston, 1903), Royal Danish Academy of Sciences (Copenhagen, 1889 ), Royal Irish Academy (1889), South Slavic (Zagreb), Czech Academy of Sciences, Literature and Art (1891), Krakow (1891), Belgian Academy of Sciences, Literature and Fine Arts (accocié, 1896), Academy of Arts (St. -Petersburg, 1893); honorary member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1891); Corresponding Member of the St. Petersburg (1876), Parisian (1899), Prussian (1900), Hungarian (1900), Bologna (1901), Serbian (1904) Academies of Sciences; honorary member of the Moscow (1880), Kyiv (1880), Kazan (1880), Kharkov (1880), Novorossiysk (1880), Yuriev (1902), St. Petersburg (1903), Tomsk (1904) universities, as well as the Institute of Agricultural economy and forestry in New Alexandria (1895), St. Petersburg Technological (1904) and St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institutes, St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical (1869) and Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy (1881), Moscow Technical School (1880).

D. I. Mendeleev was elected their honorary member of the Russian Physical and Chemical (1880), Russian Technical (1881), Russian Astronomical (1900), St. Petersburg Mineralogical (1890) Society, and about 30 more agricultural, medical, pharmaceutical and other Russian Societies - independent and university: Society for Biological Chemistry (International Association for the Promotion of Research, 1899), Society of Naturalists in Braunschweig (1888), English (1883), American (1889), German (1894) Chemical Society, Physical Society in Frankfurt -Meine (1875) and the Society of Physical Sciences in Bucharest (1899), the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (1888), the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (1893), the Royal Society of Sciences and Letters in Gothenburg (1886), the Manchester Literary and Philosophical (1889) and the Cambridge Philosophical (1897) Society, Royal Philosophical Society in Glasgow (1904), Scientific Society of Antonio Alzate (Mexico City, 1904), International ny committee of measures and weights (1901) and many other domestic and foreign scientific institutions.

The scientist was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society of London (1882), the Medal of the Academy of Meteorological Aerostatics (Paris, 1884), the Faraday Medal of the English Society of Chemistry (1889), the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London (1905) and many other awards.

Mendeleev congresses

Mendeleev congresses are the largest traditional all-Russian and international scientific forums devoted to issues of general ("pure") and applied chemistry. They differ from other similar events not only in scale, but also in the fact that they are dedicated not to individual areas of science, but to all areas of chemistry, chemical technology, industry, as well as related areas of natural science and industries. Congresses have been held in Russia on the initiative of the Russian Chemical Society since 1907 (I Congress; II Congress - 1911); in the RSFSR and the USSR - under the auspices of the Russian Chemical Society and the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1925 - the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and since 1991 - the Russian Academy of Sciences: III Congress - 1922). After the VII Congress, held in 1934, a 25-year break followed - the VIII Congress was held only in 1959.

The last XVIII Congress, held in Moscow in 2007, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of this event itself, was a "record" - 3850 participants from Russia, seven CIS countries and seventeen foreign countries. The largest number of reports in the history of the event was 2173. 440 people spoke at the meetings. There were more than 13,500 authors, including co-speakers.

Mendeleev readings

In 1940, the board of the All-Union Chemical Society. D. I. Mendeleev (VHO), the Mendeleev Readings were established - the annual reports of leading domestic chemists and representatives of related sciences (physicists, biologists and biochemists). They have been held since 1941 at Leningrad, now St. Petersburg State University, in the Large Chemistry Auditorium of the Faculty of Chemistry of St. Petersburg State University on days close to the birthday of D. I. Mendeleev (February 8, 1834) and to the date of sending him a message about the discovery of the periodic law ( March 1869). Not carried out during the Great Patriotic War; resumed in 1947 by the Leningrad branch of the All-Union Art Organization and Leningrad University on the anniversary of the 40th anniversary of the death of D. I. Mendeleev. In 1953 they were not held. In 1968, in connection with the centenary of the discovery of the periodic law by D. I. Mendeleev, three readings were held: one in March and two in October. The only eligibility criteria for the readings are an outstanding contribution to science and a Ph.D. The Mendeleev Readings were conducted by presidents and vice-presidents of the USSR Academy of Sciences, full members and corresponding members of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, a minister, Nobel laureates, and professors.

In 1934, the USSR Academy of Sciences established a prize and in 1962 - the D. I. Mendeleev Gold Medal for best work in chemistry and chemical technology.

Nobel epic

The secrecy stamp, which allows publicizing the circumstances of the nomination and consideration of candidates, implies a half-century period, that is, what happened in the first decade of the 20th century in the Nobel Committee was already known in the 1960s.

Foreign scientists nominated Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev for Nobel Prize in 1905, 1906 and 1907 (compatriots - never). The status of the award implied a qualification: the discovery was not more than 30 years old. But the fundamental significance of the periodic law was confirmed precisely at the beginning of the 20th century, with the discovery of inert gases. In 1905, the candidacy of D. I. Mendeleev was on the “small list” - with the German organic chemist Adolf Bayer, who became the laureate. In 1906, he was nominated by an even greater number of foreign scientists. The Nobel Committee awarded D. I. Mendeleev the prize, but the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences refused to approve this decision, in which the influence of S. Arrhenius, the 1903 laureate for the theory of electrolytic dissociation, played a decisive role - as indicated above, there was a misconception about the rejection of this theory by D. I. Mendeleev; the French scientist A. Moissan became the laureate for the discovery of fluorine. In 1907, it was proposed to “share” the prize between the Italian S. Cannizzaro and D. I. Mendeleev (Russian scientists again did not participate in his nomination). However, on February 2, the scientist passed away.

Meanwhile, one should not forget about the conflict between D. I. Mendeleev and the Nobel brothers (during the 1880s), who, taking advantage of the crisis in the oil industry and striving for a monopoly on Baku oil, on its extraction and distillation, speculated for this purpose "breathing intrigue rumors" about her exhaustion. D. I. Mendeleev at the same time, while conducting research on the composition of oil from different fields, developed a new method for its fractional distillation, which made it possible to achieve the separation of mixtures of volatile substances. He led a long debate with L. E. Nobel and his associates, fighting against the predatory consumption of hydrocarbons, with the ideas and methods that contributed to this; among other things, to the great displeasure of his opponent, who used not quite plausible methods to assert his interests, he proved the groundlessness of the opinion about the impoverishment of the Caspian sources. By the way, it was D. I. Mendeleev who, back in the 1860s, proposed the construction of oil pipelines, which were successfully introduced from the 1880s by the Nobels, who, nevertheless, reacted extremely negatively to his proposal to deliver crude oil in this and other ways to Central Russia, because, well aware of the benefits in this for the state as a whole, they saw this as a damage to their own monopoly. Oil (the study of the composition and properties, distillation and other issues related to this topic) D. I. Mendeleev devoted about 150 works.

D. I. Mendeleev in marginal history

As is known, under the influence of certain social and corporate trends, oral history tends to transform individual facts and phenomena that have taken place in reality, giving them anecdotal, popular or caricature features to varying degrees. These distortions, whether they are of a profane nature, which are the result of a lack of competent ideas about the true state of affairs, little awareness of issues related to the subject of the narrative, whether they are the product of the implementation of any tasks, often of a discrediting, provocative or advertising nature, remain relatively harmless in in a moral sense, until then they do not receive fixation in the field of official biblio-electronic informative carriers, which contribute to their acquisition of almost an academic status.

The most widespread interpretations of episodes from the life of D. I. Mendeleev associated with his studies of alcohol solutions, with the “solitaire” of the periodic law, allegedly seen by him in a dream, and “the production of suitcases”.

About the dreamed periodic table of elements

For a very long time D. I. Mendeleev could not present his ideas about the periodic system of elements in the form of a clear generalization, a strict and visual system. Somehow, after three days of hard work, he lay down to rest and forgot himself in a dream. Then he said: “I clearly see in a dream a table where the elements are arranged as needed. I woke up, immediately wrote down on a piece of paper and fell asleep again. Only in one place did a correction later turn out to be necessary. A. A. Inostrantsev, reproducing in approximately the same words what D. I. Mendeleev himself told him, saw in this phenomenon “one of the excellent examples of the mental impact of increased brain work on the human mind.” This story gave rise to a lot of scientific interpretations and myths. At the same time, the scientist himself, to the question of the reporter of Petersburg Listk about how the idea of ​​​​the periodic system was born, answered: “... Not a penny for a line! Not like you! I’ve been thinking about it for maybe twenty-five years, and you think: I was sitting, and suddenly a nickel for a line, a nickel for a line, and you’re done ...!

"Chemists"

At a time when chemistry in the philistine environment was interpreted as a not entirely clear purpose, a rather “dark” activity (which is close to one version of the etymology), “chemists” were colloquially called dodgers, rogues and criminals. The real fact is illustrated by such a case from the life of D. I. Mendeleev, about which he himself spoke: “I was going somehow in a cab, and the police were leading a bunch of some crooks towards me. My cab driver turns around and says: “Look, they brought the chemists.”

This “term” received a peculiar development and refraction in the USSR in the second half of the 20th century, when the Soviet penitentiary system carried out a practice that implied serving time by citizens convicted of relatively minor crimes within the production zones (initially only a chemical profile, later - to varying degrees harmful for the health of industrial establishments). This punishment was called “chemistry”, and all those subjected to this form of isolation, regardless of the affiliation of the industries where they stayed, were also called “chemists”.

Suitcases D. I. Mendeleev

There are all kinds of legends, fables and anecdotes that tell about the "production of suitcases", which D. I. Mendeleev allegedly became famous for. Indeed, Dmitry Ivanovich acquired some experience in bookbinding and cardboard work even at the time of his involuntary inaction in Simferopol, when, due to the Crimean War and the closure of the gymnasium, located near the theater of operations, he was forced to pass the time doing this business. Later, already having a huge archive, which included a lot of documents, reproductions, photographs taken by the scientist himself (he did this with great enthusiasm, photographing a lot during his trips and travels), printed materials and samples of the epistolary genre, periodically glued for them in general, simple, unpretentious cardboard containers. And in this matter, he achieved a certain skill - even a small but strong cardboard bench made by him was preserved.

There is one “reliable” anecdote, which probably gave rise to all the others related to this topic. He usually made purchases of materials for his activities of this kind in Gostiny Dvor. Once, when a scientist went into a hardware store for this purpose, he heard the following dialogue behind him: “Who is this venerable gentleman?” - “Don't you know? This is the famous suitcase master Mendeleev, ”the seller answered with respect in his voice.

Legend of the invention of vodka

Dmitry Mendeleev in 1865 defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic “Discourse on the combination of alcohol with water”, which was not at all connected with vodka. Mendeleev, contrary to the prevailing legend, did not invent vodka; it existed long before him.

The Russian Standard label says that this vodka “meets the highest quality standard of Russian vodka, approved by the tsarist government commission headed by D. I. Mendeleev in 1894.” The name of Mendeleev is associated with the choice of 40° strength for vodka. According to the Vodka Museum in St. Petersburg, Mendeleev considered the ideal strength of vodka to be 38°, but this number was rounded up to 40 to simplify the calculation of the alcohol tax.

However, in the works of Mendeleev, it is not possible to find a justification for this choice. Mendeleev's dissertation, devoted to the properties of mixtures of alcohol and water, does not single out 40 ° or 38 ° in any way. Moreover, Mendeleev's dissertation was devoted to the area of ​​high alcohol concentrations - from 70 °. The “Tsarist Government Commission” could not establish this standard for vodka in any way, if only because this organization - the Commission to find ways to streamline the production and trade circulation of drinks containing alcohol - was formed at the suggestion of S. Yu. Witte only in 1895. Moreover, Mendeleev spoke at its meetings at the very end of the year and only on the issue of excises.

Where did 1894 come from? Apparently, from an article by the historian William Pokhlebkin, who wrote that "30 years after writing his dissertation ... he agrees to join the commission." The manufacturers of the "Russian Standard" added the metaphorical 30 to 1864 and got the desired value.

The director of the D. I. Mendeleev Museum, Doctor of Chemical Sciences Igor Dmitriev, said the following about 40-degree vodka:

Addresses of D. I. Mendeleev in St. Petersburg

Monuments to D. I. Mendeleev

Monuments of federal importance

• Architectural monuments of federal importance
• Office in the building of the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures - Zabalkansky (now Moscow) Avenue, 19, building 1. - Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. No. 7810077000 // Site "Objects of cultural heritage (monuments of history and culture) of the peoples of the Russian Federation". Checked
• • Residential building of the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures - Zabalkansky (now Moskovsky) Avenue, 19, building 4, apt. 5. Arch. von Gauguin A. I. - Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. No. 7810078000 // Site "Objects of cultural heritage (monuments of history and culture) of the peoples of the Russian Federation". Checked
• Monuments of monumental art of federal importance
• Monument to the chemist D. I. Mendeleev. St. Petersburg, Moskovsky Prospekt, 19. Sculptor I. Ya. Gintsburg. The monument was unveiled on February 2, 1932. - Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. No. 7810076000 // Site "Objects of cultural heritage (monuments of history and culture) of the peoples of the Russian Federation". Checked

Memory of D. I. Mendeleev

Museums

• Museum-Archive of D. I. Mendeleev at St. Petersburg State University
• Museum-estate of D. I. Mendeleev "Boblovo"
• Museum of the State Standard of Russia at VNIIM them. D. I. Mendeleev

Settlements and stations

• City of Mendeleevsk (Republic of Tatarstan).
• The village of Mendeleevo (Solnechnogorsk district of the Moscow region).
• Railway station Mendeleevo (Karagai municipal district of the Perm Territory).
• Metro station Mendeleevskaya (Moscow).
• The village of Mendeleevo (Tobolsk district of the Tyumen region).
• The village of Mendeleev (the former camp of Dzemga) in the Leninsky district of Komsomolsk-on-Amur (Khabarovsk Territory).

Geography and astronomy

• Mendeleev Glacier (Kyrgyzstan), on the northern slope of Mendeleevets Peak
• Crater Mendeleev on the Moon
• Underwater Mendeleev Ridge in the Arctic Ocean
• Volcano Mendeleev (Kunashir Island)
• Asteroid Mendeleev (asteroid No. 12190)
• The geographical center of the Russian State (calculated by D. I. Mendeleev, the right bank of the Taz River near the village of Kikkiaki). Fixed on the ground NSE them. I. D. Papanin in 1983.

Educational establishments

• Russian University of Chemical Technology named after D. I. Mendeleev (Moscow).
• Novomoskovsk Institute of the Russian Chemical Technical University named after D. I. Mendeleev (Novomoskovsk, Tula region).
• Tobolsk State Socio-Pedagogical Academy. D. I. Mendeleev

Societies, congresses, journals

• D. I. Mendeleev Russian Chemical Society
• Mendeleev Congresses on General and Applied Chemistry

Industrial enterprises

• Oil refinery named after D. I. Mendeleev in the village of Konstantinovsky (Tutaevsky district, Yaroslavl region).

Literature

• O. Pisarzhevsky "Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev" (1949; Stalin Prize, 1951)

Bonistics, numismatics, philately, sigillaty

• In 1984, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mendeleev, a commemorative ruble was issued in the USSR.
• Mendeleev is depicted on the front side of the banknote of 100 Ural francs issued in 1991.

Name: Dmitry Mendeleev

Age: 72 years old

Place of Birth: Tobolsk

A place of death: St. Petersburg

Activity: great Russian chemist

Family status: was married to Anyuta Popova

Dmitri Mendeleev - biography

When the seventeenth child, Mitya Mendeleev, was born in the family of the director of the Tobolsk gymnasium on February 8, 1834, the doctor said: "Not a tenant." Whether mother's troubles helped, or God's Providence, however, Mitenka survived and got stronger. More than once he will have to hear these words both literally and figuratively. Doctors predicted a quick death, in the gymnasium they considered it unpromising, they did not accept him at the university, colleagues denied his hypotheses, and sometimes even laughed.

When the opponents had nothing to hide, the last argument was used: Mendeleev was convicted of Jewish origin. In fact, his father's surname was Sokolov. According to legend, Ivan Pavlovich once exchanged a horse with a merchant - “he did the exchange”, and by consonance in the book he was recorded as Mendeleev.

As a gymnasium student, Mendeleev Jr. turned out to be mediocre. Latin was especially difficult - the boy had an easy, quick mind, and he refused to perceive everything that was connected with cramming. And yet he was going to study at the Medico-Surgical Academy, where one had to know Latin well.

The trip to Moscow turned out to be in vain: the applicant went to the autopsy, where he became ill. They didn't take me to Moscow University either. Today, in textbooks, one can read that the future great chemist allegedly did not pass the exam in chemistry. But this subject was not studied in gymnasiums and, moreover, they did not arrange an entrance exam. Everything was more prosaic: they were admitted to universities “by registration”, and a gymnasium student from Tobolsk could study only at Kazan University.

Loving mother used all connections and acquaintances and managed to identify her son in St. Petersburg. So Mendeleev became a student at the Main Pedagogical Institute, which his father had once graduated from.

Some time later, the future scientist received news of the sudden death of his mother. A little later, sister Elizabeth died of tuberculosis, and soon Dmitry himself fell ill with consumption - stress and the damp metropolitan climate did their job. Doctors once again told Mendeleev: "Not a tenant" and advised him to go to the Crimea to Pirogov. Having examined the young man, the luminary of medicine laughed: “You will outlive us all!” And indeed, the disease receded.

Inspired Dmitry returned to science. He graduated with honors from the institute, defended two dissertations at intervals of several months, and at the beginning of 1857 became assistant professor at St. Petersburg University. The young scientist was only 23 years old, he was well versed in the natural sciences, he was predicted to have a great future. Mendeleev could not comprehend only one formula ...

Dmitry Mendeleev - biography of personal life: formula of love

Dmitry often recalled in his biography the first meeting with Sonechka. Judging by the entries in her diary, she did not forget.

She is 8 years old, her father takes her to the Tobolsk gymnasium for a dance lesson. She is paired with a young man. He is already 14, but for some reason he is shy of the girl, pulls his hand away and leaves. Sonechka bit her lip to keep from crying, but he didn't notice anything. Turns out he noticed.

Almost ten years have passed since that meeting. And now, not Mitya, but Privatdozent Dmitry Ivanovich met Sonya Kash in St. Petersburg. Sonya's family leaves for a manor in Karelia - the lover follows them. Until now, the herbarium collected by Dmitry and Sofya on the shore of Lake Saimaa is kept in the Museum-Apartment of Mendeleev.

When she turned 18, Mendeleev came to woo. The girl did not say "yes", but everyone already considered her Mendeleev's bride. The wedding day was appointed, friends and relatives congratulated the happy lover, but ... Sonechka was frightened of a hasty marriage and told her father that she would say “no” at the wedding. He conveyed her refusal.

Dmitry fell down. For three days he drank only water, and on the fourth he came to the house of the former bride. “He passionately kissed my hands, and they were wet with his tears. I will never forget this difficult moment, ”Sonya wrote in her diary. In Mendeleev's notes, on the contrary, everything is simple and scientifically dry: "I wanted to marry, I refused."

For two years he lectured, but everything in St. Petersburg reminded me of Sonya. To forget himself, Mendeleev asked for a business trip and went to Germany for two years. When he returned, he wrote the first Russian textbook "Organic Chemistry", for which he received the Demidov Prize, the highest scientific prize in Russia. But even such successes did not help tighten the heart wound.

Sister Olga decided to help - she found a bride, again from Tobolsk and again an old acquaintance. Feozva was the adopted daughter of Pyotr Ershov, the author of The Little Humpbacked Horse, a teacher at the Mendeleev gymnasium. Six years older, ugly, unloved ... Despite this, in April 1862, Mendeleev and Feozva got married. Daughter Mashenka, who was born a year later, soon died. One after another, two more children appeared - Volodya and Olenka. But the marriage was cracking at the seams: the wife did not want to understand what her husband was doing, scandalized, reproached for inattention and a waste of time.

But the young beauty Anyuta Popova admired everything that the scientist does, and, being in the Mendeleevs' house, listened to him with rapture. In order not to lead to sin, Popova's father sent his daughter to Italy. Mendeleev rushed after her. A month later, the lovers announced their intention to get married. A scandal broke out: she was 19 years old, he was 43. The wife agreed to a divorce, but according to the law, it was possible to remarry only after a few years. According to rumors, to perform the wedding ceremony, Mendeleev gave the priest a huge amount for those times - 10 thousand rubles.

Four children were born in this marriage: Lyuba, Vanya and twins Masha and Vasya. The eldest Lyuba subsequently became the wife of Alexander Blok, and “Poems about the Beautiful Lady” are dedicated to her.

Dmitry Mendeleev - "prophetic dream" and vodka

The townsfolk know two facts in Mendeleev's biography: he invented vodka and saw his famous table in a dream. It's a pity, because he did much more. For example, he created smokeless powder and even set up its production. However, the government did not have time to patent it, and the invention "floated" overseas. As a result, Russia was forced to buy "Mendeleev" gunpowder from the United States.

Creating a periodic system of chemical elements, Mendeleev arranged them in order of increasing atomic weight. There was nothing to fill in some of the cells - science at that time did not know so many elements - and he left the cells empty. The genius of the system became clear later, after the death of the scientist: chemists discovered new elements, and each had a place in the table.

Mendeleev was often asked how he got this brilliant idea. The scientist soon got tired of explaining the details to amateurs, and he began to laugh it off: they say, he was tired in the laboratory, went to take a nap, had a dream, and when he woke up, he quickly wrote everything down on a piece of paper. Only to one newspaperman did Mendeleev say: "I've been thinking about it for maybe twenty years, but you think: I was sitting and suddenly ... it's ready."

The “invention” of vodka by scientists also turned out to be a myth. He was born thanks to the thesis, which Dmitry Ivanovich defended in 1865. The work was called "Reasoning about the combination of alcohol with water" and was devoted to the study of the interaction of two liquids. At the same time, there was no talk of vodka. In fact, vodka with an ideal strength of 40 ° appeared back in 1843, when Mendeleev was only 9 years old.

The range of his interests was extremely wide. Dmitry Ivanovich studied the oil fields of the Caucasus and the coal fields of Donbass, realizing that the future lies with this fuel. In 1892 he headed the Main Chamber of Measures and Weights (some of the standards made under him are still in use). Being a passionate collector of sculpture and painting, Mendeleev was a full member of the Academy of Arts and an honorary member of many foreign academies. Ironically, in Russian Academy Sciences did not accept him.

MENDELEEV, Dmitry I.

Russian chemist Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was born in Tobolsk in the family of the director of the gymnasium. While studying at the gymnasium, Mendeleev had very mediocre grades, especially in Latin. In 1850 he entered the Department of Natural Sciences of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Main Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg. Among the professors of the Institute were then such outstanding scientists as the physicist E. Kh. Lenz, the chemist A. A. Voskresensky, and the mathematician N. V. Ostrogradsky. In 1855, Mendeleev graduated from the institute with a gold medal and was appointed senior teacher at a gymnasium in Simferopol, but because of the outbreak of the Crimean War, he transferred to Odessa, where he worked as a teacher at the Richelieu Lyceum.

In 1856, Mendeleev defended his master's thesis at St. Petersburg University, in 1857 he was approved as a Privatdozent of this university and taught a course in organic chemistry there. In 1859-1861. Mendeleev was on a scientific trip to Germany, where he worked in the laboratory of R. Bunsen and G. Kirchhoff at the University of Heidelberg. One of the important discoveries of Mendeleev belongs to this period - the definition of the “absolute boiling point of liquids”, now known as the critical temperature. In 1860, Mendeleev, along with other Russian chemists, took part in the work of the International Congress of Chemists in Karlsruhe, where S. Cannizzaro presented his interpretation of A. Avogadro's molecular theory. This speech and discussion about the distinction between the concepts of atom, molecule and equivalent served as an important prerequisite for the discovery of the periodic law.

Returning to Russia in 1861, Mendeleev continued lecturing at St. Petersburg University. In 1861, he published the textbook Organic Chemistry, which was awarded the Demidov Prize by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1864, Mendeleev was elected professor of chemistry at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute. In 1865, he defended his doctoral thesis "On the combination of alcohol with water" (the topic of the dissertation is often used to substantiate the legend of his invention of 40-degree vodka). In the same year, Mendeleev was approved as a professor of technical chemistry at St. Petersburg University, and two years later he headed the department of inorganic chemistry.

Starting to read the course of inorganic chemistry at St. Petersburg University, Mendeleev, not finding a single manual that he could recommend to students, began to write his classic work "Fundamentals of Chemistry". In the preface to the second edition of the first part of the textbook, published in 1869, Mendeleev gave a table of elements entitled "Experience of a system of elements based on their atomic weight and chemical similarity", and in March 1869, at a meeting of the Russian Chemical Society, N. A Menshutkin reported on behalf of Mendeleev his periodic table of elements. The periodic law was the foundation on which Mendeleev created his textbook. During the life of Mendeleev, "Fundamentals of Chemistry" was published in Russia 8 times, five more editions were published in translations into English, German and French.

Over the next two years, Mendeleev made a number of corrections and refinements to the original version of the periodic system, and in 1871 he published two classic articles - "The natural system of elements and its application to indicate the properties of certain elements" (in Russian) and "Periodic law of chemical elements” (in German in “Annals” by J. Liebig). On the basis of his system, Mendeleev corrected the atomic weights of some known elements, and also made an assumption about the existence of unknown elements and ventured to predict the properties of some of them. At first, the system itself, the corrections made and Mendeleev's forecasts were met by the scientific community with great restraint. However, after Mendeleev predicted "ekaaluminum" (gallium), "ekabor" (scandium) and "ekasilicon" (germanium) were discovered respectively in 1875, 1879 and 1886, the periodic law began to gain recognition.

Made in the late XIX - early XX centuries. the discoveries of inert gases and radioactive elements did not shake the periodic law, but only strengthened it. The discovery of isotopes explained some irregularities in the sequence of elements in ascending order of their atomic weights (the so-called "anomalies"). The creation of a theory of the structure of the atom finally confirmed the correct arrangement of the elements by Mendeleev and made it possible to resolve all doubts about the place of the lanthanides in the periodic system.

Mendeleev developed the doctrine of periodicity until the end of his life. Among other scientific works of Mendeleev, one can note a series of works on the study of solutions and the development of the hydrate theory of solutions (1865–1887). In 1872, he began studying the elasticity of gases, which resulted in the generalized equation of state of an ideal gas proposed in 1874 (the Claiperon-Mendeleev equation). In 1880–1885 Mendeleev dealt with the problems of oil refining, proposed the principle of its fractional distillation. In 1888, he proposed the idea of ​​underground coal gasification, and in 1891-1892. developed a technology for the manufacture of a new type of smokeless powder.

In 1890, Mendeleev was forced to leave St. Petersburg University due to contradictions with the Minister of Public Education. In 1892, he was appointed custodian of the Depot of Exemplary Weights and Measures (which in 1893, on his initiative, was transformed into the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures). With the participation and under the leadership of Mendeleev, the prototypes of the pound and arshin were renewed in the chamber, and Russian standards of measures were compared with English and metric ones (1893-1898). Mendeleev considered it necessary to introduce the metric system of measures in Russia, which, at his insistence, was admitted optionally in 1899.

Mendeleev was one of the founders of the Russian Chemical Society (1868) and was repeatedly elected its president. In 1876, Mendeleev became a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, but Mendeleev's candidacy for academician was rejected in 1880.

Place of Birth: Tobolsk

Activities and Interests: chemistry, technology, economics, metrology, agrochemistry and agriculture, education, physical chemistry, solid state chemistry, theory of solutions, physics of liquids and gases, oil technology, instrumentation, meteorology, aeronautics, shipbuilding, development of the Far North, pedagogy, bookbinding, cardboard work

Biography
Russian encyclopedic scientist, author of fundamental works in chemistry, physics, chemical technology, metrology, aeronautics, meteorology, agriculture, economics, etc. The most famous discovery of Mendeleev is the fundamental law of nature, the periodic law of chemical elements.
He himself believed that "more than four subjects in total ... the periodic law, the study of the elasticity of gases, the understanding of solutions as associations and the Fundamentals of Chemistry" made up his name. The periodic law was discovered by him in the course of his work on the Fundamentals of Chemistry. He studied solutions all his life, gradually comprehending the nature of a chemical compound as such, and the Clapeyron-Mendeleev equation (the general equation of state of an ideal gas) is an important formula that establishes the relationship between pressure, molar volume and absolute temperature of an ideal gas.
Throughout his life, he regularly participated in manufacturing enterprises, where theoretical scientific problems had rather applied significance. In addition, he was interested in very diverse fields of activity, including aeronautics, shipbuilding and the development of the Far North.
Mendeleev is the author of more than one and a half thousand works, including the classic Fundamentals of Chemistry, the first systematic presentation of inorganic chemistry (1869 - 1871). He enjoyed great scientific prestige throughout the world and was awarded many awards - Russian and foreign orders and medals, honorary membership in various Russian and foreign scientific societies, numerous scientific titles, etc.

Education, degrees and titles
1847−1849, Tobolsk male gymnasium
1850−1855, St. Petersburg Main Pedagogical Institute
1856, St. Petersburg University: Master of Chemistry
1857, St. Petersburg University, Department of Chemistry: assistant professor
1865, St. Petersburg University, Faculty: Physics and Mathematics: Doctor of Science
1876, Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences: corresponding member

Work
1855, Simferopol male gymnasium: senior teacher of natural sciences
1855−1856, Gymnasium at the Richelieu Lyceum, Odessa, Ukraine
1857−1890, St. Petersburg University: professor of chemical technology (since 1865), professor of general chemistry (since 1867)
1859−1861, Heidelberg University, Germany
1863−1872, St. Petersburg Institute of Technology: professor and head of the chemical laboratory
1879, Yaroslavl oil refinery (now named after D.I. Mendeleev): founder and chief technologist
1890−1893, Depot of exemplary weights and scales, St. Petersburg: scientist-custodian
1893, Main Chamber of Weights and Measures (now All-Russian Research Institute of Metrology named after D.I. Mendeleev), St. Petersburg: manager
1893, Chemical plant P.K. Ushkov (now named after L.Ya. Karpov)
1903, Kyiv Polytechnic Institute: Chairman of the State Examination Commission

House
1834−1849, Tobolsk province, Tobolsk and s. Aremzyanskoye
1850−1855, St. Petersburg
1855, Simferopol
1855−1856, Odessa
1856−1857, St. Petersburg
1859−1861, Germany, Heidelberg and Bonn
1861−1865, St. Petersburg
1865−1906, Moscow region, Boblovo
1866−1907, St. Petersburg

Facts from life
He was the last child in a large family of the director of the gymnasium and the heiress of a merchant family. Mendeleev's paternal grandfather had the surname Sokolov, but the father of the scientist Ivan Pavlovich was nicknamed Mendeleev, because, as Dmitry Ivanovich later believed, "he traded for something, like the neighboring landowner Mendeleev changed horses." Mendeleev's mother, Maria Dmitrievna, came from an old family of Siberian merchants and industrialists, and in order to support her family, she managed a glass factory for many years. In order for the future scientist to receive an education, his mother took him from Siberia to Moscow, from where he then went to St. Petersburg. Mendeleev was grateful to his mother all his life and devoted his scientific works to her.
In the gymnasium where Mendeleev studied, Russian literature was taught by the future author of The Little Humpbacked Horse, the poet P.P. Ershov.
In 1859, he improved his science in Heidelberg, where he studied the relationship between the chemical and physical properties of substances, studying the cohesive forces of particles based on data obtained from measurements of capillarity (surface tension of liquids) at various temperatures. The laboratory of the German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen at Heidelberg University did not allow such subtle experiments, so Mendeleev had to create his own laboratory.
He studied in Bonn under the "famous glass maestro" Gessler, who created Mendeleev's thermometers and devices for measuring specific gravity.
In 1875-1876, he participated in the work of a commission to investigate mediumistic phenomena, consistently exposed spiritualism.
In 1880 he was nominated as a full member of the Academy of Sciences, but was not elected.
He left St. Petersburg University, having quarreled with the Minister of Education: during student unrest, he refused to accept a student petition from Mendeleev.
He took part in the development of technologies for the first Russian plant for the production of machine oils in the Yaroslavl province.
In 1892 he became the custodian of the Depot of exemplary weights and weights, a year later, at the initiative of Mendeleev, it was transformed into the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures.
In 1893 he worked at the chemical plant P.K. Ushkov on the production of pyrocollodic smokeless powder.
In 1899, he led the Ural expedition dedicated to the modernization of iron ore mining and processing.
He formulated the main directions of the economic development of Russia, strongly advocated protectionism and the expansion of foreign investment in Russian industry, and in 1891, together with S.Yu. Witte worked on the Customs Tariff.
In his works on economics, he promoted the development of a community and artel spirit and proposed to reform the community so that in summer it would be engaged in agriculture, and in winter it would work at a communal factory.
At the beginning of the 20th century, he calculated that by 2050 the population of Russia should reach 800 million people.
The works and appeals were signed by “D. Mendeleev" or "Professor Mendeleev", very rarely mentioning his honorary titles, which he had in abundance.
Around 1900, after the World Exhibition in Paris, he wrote the first article in Russian about synthetic fibers "Viscose at the Paris Exhibition".
Foreign scientists nominated Mendeleev for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry three times (in 1905, 1906 and 1907) for the discovery of the periodic law, which Mendeleev's Russian colleagues never did. In 1905, the German chemist Adolf Bayer overtook Mendeleev; in 1906 - Henri Moissan: at first, the Nobel Committee awarded Mendeleev the prize, but the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences objected. In 1907, it was planned to share the prize between the Italian chemist Stanislao Cannizzaro and Mendeleev, but Mendeleev died on February 2, 1907, without waiting for the committee's decision. Cannizzaro, however, did not receive the prize either.
The story that Mendeleev dreamed of the periodic table of elements is true, but not entirely. He worked for a long time on its generalization and systematization, and one day, after working for three days, he lay down, dozed off and saw a table where the elements were arranged in the right order. It cannot be said that it was a vision from above - Mendeleev simply continued to think in a dream.
There is a legend that Mendeleev was famous for the production of suitcases. He was really engaged in bookbinding and cardboard work, he himself glued boxes for transporting papers and learned how to do it quite deftly, but, of course, not professionally, but he was known among the people as a “suitcase master”.
The legend that Mendeleev invented vodka is pure form legend. Mendeleev did indeed defend his dissertation “On the Combination of Alcohol with Water”, but there is no mention of mixtures with a strength of 40 ° (or, according to another version, 38 °). In 1895, when Mendeleev participated in the meetings of the Witte Commission to find ways to streamline the production and trade circulation of drinks containing alcohol, vodka had existed in Russia for many years.
Throughout his life, Mendeleev was a consistent patriot and deeply resented the fact that the discoveries of Russian scientists in Russia are valued below Western works. Toward the end of his life, his patriotism took on somewhat extremist forms: in 1905, Mendeleev joined the Black Hundred Union of the Russian People.
Mendeleev's son-in-law was the Russian poet Alexander Blok, married to the daughter of the scientist Lyubov.
There is such an anecdote: “Once Mendeleev came to the Chamber of Weights and Measures in great annoyance. He shouted at everyone, then sat down in an armchair, smiled and said cheerfully: “This is how I feel today!”
Mendeleev defined his “three services to the Motherland” as follows: scientific activity, teaching and service Russian industry.
The 101st chemical element - mendelevium, as well as a mineral, a lunar crater and an underwater mountain range are named after Mendeleev. Since 1907, Mendeleev congresses have been regularly held in Russia, devoted to a wide range of issues in general and applied chemistry, and since 1941 - Mendeleev readings, where reports by Russian chemists, physicists, biologists and biochemists are read.

Discoveries
In the course of work on the work "Fundamentals of Chemistry", D.I. Mendeleev in February 1869 discovered one of the fundamental laws of nature - the periodic law of chemical elements, which allows not only to determine with accuracy many properties of already known elements, but also to predict properties that have not yet been discovered. In the course of his work on the periodic table, Mendeleev specified the values ​​of the atomic masses of nine elements, and also predicted the existence, atomic masses, and properties of a number of elements discovered later (gallium, scandium, germanium, polonium, astatine, technetium, and francium). Supplemented the table with the zero group of noble gases in 1900. In the 1850s, he studied the phenomena of isomorphism, which demonstrate the interdependence of the crystalline form and chemical composition of compounds, as well as the dependence of the properties of elements on their atomic volumes.
In 1859, Mendeleev designed a device for determining the density of a liquid - a pycnometer.
In 1860 he discovered the absolute boiling point of liquids - the critical temperature at which the density and pressure saturated steam are maximum, and the density of the liquid in dynamic equilibrium with vapor is minimum.
In 1861 he published organic chemistry"- the first Russian textbook on this discipline.
In 1865 - 1887 he formulated the hydrate theory of solutions and developed ideas about compounds of variable composition. The foundations of Mendeleev's theory of solutions were laid in 1865 in his doctoral dissertation "On the combination of alcohol with water." Subsequently, on the basis of his theory, the theory of electrolyte solutions was formulated.
In 1868 he was one of the founders of the Russian Chemical Society, and in 1876 he initiated its official merger with the Russian Physical Society, which resulted in the formation of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society in 1878.
In 1869 - 1971 he published "Fundamentals of Chemistry" - the first systematic presentation of inorganic chemistry.
In 1874, he found the general equation of state for an ideal gas (the Clapeyron-Mendeleev equation), a special case of which is the dependence of the state of a gas on temperature, discovered by the French physicist Benoit Paul Emile Clapeyron in 1834. He also began to investigate the properties of real gases.
In 1875, he developed a project for a stratospheric balloon with a hermetic gondola capable of rising into the upper atmosphere, as well as a project for a controlled balloon with engines.
In 1877 he proposed the principle of fractional distillation in oil refining. He also suggested the origin of oil from heavy metal carbides - a hypothesis currently not supported by scientists.
In 1880 he proposed the idea of ​​underground coal gasification.
He promoted the use of mineral fertilizers, the irrigation of drylands, the expansion of infrastructure (including in the Urals) and other progressive measures that promote the development of agriculture and industry.
In 1890 - 1892, together with I.M. Cheltsov developed pyrocollodic smokeless powder.
On the basis of the Depot of exemplary weights and scales, in 1893 he created the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures (now the All-Russian Research Institute of Metrology named after D.I. Mendeleev), and in 1901 - the first verification tent in Ukraine, which verified trade measures and scales, and subsequently became Kharkov Institute of Metrology; this was the beginning of the history of metrology and standardization in Ukraine.
Contributed to the legalization of the basic measures of length and weight (arshin and pound).
He created the exact theory of weights, developed the best designs of the rocker arm and the cage.
In 1901 - 1902, he designed an Arctic expeditionary icebreaker and developed a high-latitude "industrial" sea route, along which ships could pass near the North Pole.