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b. February 7, 1834 in Tobolsk?, Siberia? d. January 20, 1907 in [St. Petersburg]?, Russia Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was a Russian chemist who became known for creating the first version of the Periodic Table of Elements. |
Mendeleev was the youngest of fourteen children of Maria Dmitrievna Korniliev and Ivan Pavlovitch Mendeleev. At the age of 14, after the death of his father, Mendeleev was attending the Gymnasium in Tobolsk. In 1849, the now poor family Mendeleev relocated to St. Petersburg, where he entered university in 1850. After graduating, a sickness that was diagnosed as tuberculosis made him move to Crimean Peninsula near the Black Sea in 1855 as chief science master of the local gymnasium, but he returned with fully restored health to St. Petersburg in 1856.
Between 1859 and 1861 he worked on the density of gases in Paris, and the workings of the spectroscope? with [Gustav Robert Kirchoff]? in Heidelberg?. In 1863, after returning to Russia, he became Professor of Chemistry at the Technological Institute and the University of St. Petersburg. In the same year, he married Feozva Nikitchna Lascheva.
In 1866, Newlands? published his [Law of Octaves]?. Mendeleev had been working on a similar idea, and on March 6, 1869, a formal presentation was made to the Russian Chemical Society, entitled The Dependence Between the Properties of the Atomic Weights of the Elements, stating :
Though Mendeleev was widely honored from scientific organizations all over Europe, his political activities worried the Russian government, which led to his resignation from St. Petersburg University on August 17, 1890. In 1893, he was appointed Director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures.
See also: http://www.chem.msu.su/eng/misc/mendeleev/welcome.html