Dmitri Mendeleev
(8 February 1834 - 2 February 1907)
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Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev
Introduction:
Introduction:
Mendeleev was a Russian chemist and inventor. He is best remembered for formulating the Periodic Law and creating a farsighted version of the Periodic Table of elements. He used the Periodic Law not only to correct the then-accepted properties of some known elements, such as the valence and atomic weight of uranium, but also to predict the properties of undiscovered eight elements.
Background:
Background:
Family -
Mendeleev was born in 1834 in Russia’s Siberia. He is the youngest child in the family.
When Dmitri was little, his father, a teacher, went blind, and his mother went to work. She became the manager of a successful glass factory. In 1848, when the factory burned down and the family faced poverty.
Saint Petersburg University
Education -
Mendeleev’s mother traveled with him to Moscow then to St. Petersburg to get him an education in Saint Petersburg University.
Ten days after he was enrolled in school, his mother died of tuberculosis, a disease that had also taken his father.
Feozva Nikitichna Leshcheva
Personal relationship -
In 1862, he married Feozva Nikitichna Leshcheva at Nikolaev Engineering Institute's church in Saint Petersburg.
In 1876, he became obsessed with Anna Ivanova Popova and began courting her. He proposed to her and threatened suicide if she refused.
His divorce from Leshcheva was finalized one month after he had married Popova in 1882.
Anna Ivanova Popova
Death - In 1907, Mendeleev died at the age of 72 in Saint Petersburg from influenza. His last words were to his physician: "Doctor, you have science, I have faith," which is one of Jules Verne’s quotes.
Contributions to Chemistry:
Contributions to Chemistry:
Mendeleev recognized that there was no contemporary textbook on modern organic chemistry (concerned with carbon compounds, including living things)
His ‘Organic Chemistry (1861)’ was considered his era’s most authoritative book on the subject.
Mendeleev is given credit for the introduction of the metric system to the Russian Empire.
He invented pyrocollodion, a kind of smokeless powder based on nitrocellulose.
This work had been commissioned by the Russian Navy but did not adopt its use.
Pyrocollodion
The Features of Periodic Table by Dmitri Mendeleev :
The Features of Periodic Table by Dmitri Mendeleev :
In 1867, when Mendeleev began writing Principles of Chemistry, he set out to organize and explain the elements.
At that time, elements were normally grouped either by their atomic weight or by their common properties. Mendeleev managed to combine them into a single framework.
Mendeleev was inspired by the card game known as solitaire. Mendeleev made up a set of cards according to the atomic weight and the properties of the 63 elements known at the time.
Mendeleev started to rearrange the cards in various sequences until he noticed some gaps in the order of atomic mass.
Mendeleev, exhausted from his three-day effort, fell asleep. He later recalled, “I saw in a dream, a table, where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper”.
From the Periodic Table drawn, Mendeleev discovered the Periodic Law. When he arranged the elements in order of increasing atomic mass, the properties were repeated.
In devising his table, Mendeleev did not conform completely to the order of atomic mass. He swapped some elements around. Although he was unaware of it, he had actually placed the elements in order of increasing atomic number.
According to the element arranged, Mendeleev corrected the known atomic masses of some elements. He used the patterns in his table to predict and left blank spaces in his chart the properties of the undiscovered elements.
Mendeleev would predict the hypothetical elements’ atomic mass, atomic number, and other properties according to the location of the gap. He named these with the prefix eka, meaning “first” in Sanskrit. For instance, the predicted element designated as “eka-aluminum”. He located it below the known element aluminum. It was later identified as gallium.
Mendeleev’s 1869 Periodic Table
Within 15 years, the “missing” elements were discovered, conforming to the basic characteristics Mendeleev had recorded.
The accuracy of those predictions led to the Periodic Table’s acceptance.
Awards and Honors:
Awards and Honors:
“Father of the Periodic Table”
Davy Medal (1882)
Lothar Meyer and Dmitri Mendeleev received this for their discovery of the periodic relations of the atomic weights
ForMemRS (1892)
ForMemRS, the Fellowship of the Royal Society, is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science, and medical science".
The textbook named ‘Organic Chemistry’ won him the Demidov Prize of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
Copley Medal for his contributions to chemical and physical science.
Davy Medal
Sculpture in honor of Mendeleev and the periodic table, located in Bratislava, Slovakia
Mendeleev Gold Medal of Demidov Prize
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