Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Our mission here
is to take the dense, fascinating sources you
provide, the historical texts, the biographies,
the scientific papers, and really distill them
into the essential knowledge you need to be truly
well -informed. And today we are diving deep
into a figure whose face is... I mean, it's on
every chemistry classroom poster in the world.
Right. Dmitri Mendeleev. But for most people,
the story just stops there. It does. You ask
anyone who he was and they'll say, oh, he's the
father of the periodic table. And that's it.
End of story. But that's the challenge, isn't
it? Because the sources we've reviewed, they
paint a picture of this. This relentless polymath,
a Siberian chemist for sure, but also a pioneering
oil economist, a foundational physicist. And
the architect of Russia's entire system of weights
and measures. It's an incredible breadth. The
sources show he was driven by this one single
unifying force. A hunger for systematic order.
Whether he was organizing the elements or standardizing
vodka production. Well, we'll get to that myth
later. Right. But it was always about seeking
these predictive laws in the chaos. Exactly.
So our deep dive today moves beyond the classroom
chemistry. We are unpacking the totality of the
man. We're looking at the scientific genius,
yeah, but also the revolutionary industrial thinker,
the dramatic personal life that actually cost
him recognition at home. And a few of those popular
myths that we really need to set straight. We're
drawing from biographical accounts to see how
his whole expansive career was at its core this
fundamental search for both truth and utility.
OK, so to understand the sheer audacity of his
later genius, we have to start at the very beginning.
And that beginning is a testament to just incredible
resilience. It really is. We're talking about
very humble Siberian origins. Dmitry Ivanovich
Mendeleev was born in 1834, not in some cosmopolitan
hub like St. Petersburg, but way out in a small
village called Grikny -Armzyany near Tobolsk.
And that geographical isolation is key. So is
the family's economic situation. The sources
note he was the youngest of a massive family.
Massive is the right word. The exact number is
kind of disputed historically. It is. It ranges
from, you know, 13 reliable survivors to maybe
17 children that his mother reportedly bore.
But what's clear is the scale of the household.
And the crisis they were plunged into. A huge
crisis. His father, Ivan, was a local school
principal and he went blind, which back then
meant he immediately lost his job, his livelihood.
So the father's income is just gone and the family
is facing immediate, serious financial strain.
And this is where we meet the central figure
of his entire early life, his mother, Maria Dmitrievna
Mendeleva. She seems like an absolute force of
nature. She was. The sources are clear on this.
She was the one who kept the family afloat and
later the one who drove Dimitri's entire education.
She was remarkable, an educated woman from a
prominent merchant family. And her response to
the crisis wasn't passive at all? Not in the
slightest. To support this enormous family, she
took the really proactive step of reopening and
managing her family's abandoned glass factory.
Which is just incredible to think about. This
isn't just a small effort to make ends meet.
running an industrial enterprise. In the middle
of Siberia. And this must have given young Dimitri
this very early, very practical exposure to industrial
chemistry, to production. That hands -on experience
with something like glassmaking had to have shaped
his later thinking on state draft and resource
management. No question. But then tragedy strikes
again. After all her work to get the factory
running. It burns down. destroyed by fire and
dimitri was only a teenager at the time it's
this profound cycle of um catastrophe and just
sheer determination that seems to have forged
his character and his mother's legacy wasn't
just practical it was intellectual oh absolutely
the biographies all confirm that she was the
one who encouraged him to patiently searched
divine and scientific truth. She saw his unique
gifts and prioritized them above everything else.
She really instilled in him this idea that learning
was the ultimate goal, non -negotiable. And that
conviction led to this incredible journey, the
cross -Russia pursuit of an education. After
his father's passing and the loss of the factory,
Maria makes this momentous decision. She takes
15 -year -old Dmitry in 1849 and travels the
immense distance from Siberia all the way to
Moscow. And we really need to pause here and
just appreciate the magnitude of that journey
in the mid -19th century. Right. This is not
a quick train ride. No, this was a monumental
undertaking. Weeks, maybe months of incredibly
arduous travel for a mother and her son, driven
by, you know, desperation and hope. And initially,
all that effort was met with rejection. Total
rejection. The sources are very clear that Moscow
University just denied his admission. Flat out.
Can you just imagine the frustration, the emotional
weight of traveling all that way across an empire
just to be told no? It would have crushed a lesser
person. But Maria, she pressed on. They went
to St. Petersburg. And there they finally had
some success. Yes. She managed to secure him
a place at his late father's alma mater, the
Maine Pedagogical Institute, in 1850. But his
struggles weren't over. Shortly after he graduated,
his health completely failed him. He contracted
tuberculosis, a very, very serious diagnosis
at the time. A genuine health crisis that forced
a dramatic change of scenery. He had to move
south. To the Crimean Peninsula, yeah. He took
up a position as a science master at the Simferopol
Gymnasium in 1855, a much warmer climate. This
two -year period, which often gets glossed over,
was basically a necessary reset for his health.
It was. By 1857, he had fully recovered and was
able to return to St. Petersburg, ready to resume
what turned into a very high -intensity academic
career. And from that point on... His early scientific
foundations were just established incredibly
quickly. He immediately focused on cutting -edge
research. He took international research trips,
spending time in Heidelberg from 1859 to 1861.
And he wasn't just observing there, was he? He
was actively contributing. Oh, he was right in
the mix, studying physical chemistry. His research
was highly specific, very technical. He was looking
at the capillarity of liquids and the precise
workings of the spectroscope. Which was still
a very new, very powerful instrument for chemical
analysis back then. And this is critical because
it shows he was mastering both the classical
techniques and the emerging tools of instrumentation.
It set him up perfectly for his later systematic
work. That grounding paid off almost immediately.
Instantly. He earned his first real widespread
recognition by publishing his textbook Organic
Chemistry in 1861. And it won the prestigious
Demidov Prize, which was a huge academic honor
in Imperial Russia. From there, his career trajectory
just rocketed upward. He got a professorship
at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute
in 1864, then moved quickly to St. Petersburg
State University in 1865. And in that same year,
he earns his doctor of science degree. He does.
And his doctoral dissertation title is something
we have to flag now. On the combinations of water
with alcohol. Precisely. Because that title is
the little spark that ignites one of the great
enduring myths about him, which we will definitely
come back to in detail. But just looking at...
his institutional impact. His return to St. Petersburg
was profound. It wasn't just about accumulating
titles for himself. By 1871, Mendeleev had taken
the chemistry department at St. Petersburg State
University and transformed it. Into what? Into
an internationally recognized center for advanced
research. He basically created a hub that drew
the best students and scholars from all across
Europe. He wasn't just an academic presence.
He was an institution builder. Okay, let's transition
now to the moment that changed chemistry forever.
But before we get to Mendeley's breakthrough,
let's set the stage. What did the world of chemistry
actually look like in the early 1860s? Intellectually
speaking, it was a mess, a complete mess. A collection
of facts with no theory? Exactly. By 1863, there
were only about 56 known elements, and they were
still being discovered at a pretty steady clip
about one new element per year. So the information
was growing and growing, but the structure was
totally absent. So chemists had this rapidly
expanding list of ingredients for the universe,
but no recipe book, no framework to organize
them. It was a descriptive science, like you
said, not yet a predictive one. And Mendeleev
was definitely not the only person searching
for that structure. We absolutely have to acknowledge
the attempts made by his contemporaries. The
ground was fertile for this kind of discovery.
Very fertile. You had people like John Newlands
in England. In 1864, he described his law of
octaves. The musical analogy, right? Right. He
noticed that if you arrange the elements by increasing
atomic weight, their properties seem to repeat
every eight elements, just like musical notes
in an octave. And Newlands' work. It was a genuine
step forward. He even identified the potential
for new elements. elements like germanium. But
it was heavily criticized, even mocked at the
time. Why did it fail to get any traction? Well,
because it lacked consistency. And crucially,
it lacked predictive power across the whole spectrum
of elements. The Octa's analogy worked OK for
the lighter elements, but it just broke down
completely as you moved into the heavier ones.
So the system seemed arbitrary. It did. It felt
forced. And while Newlands was eventually recognized
for his insight in 1887, his initial failure
was because the system was too rigid and at the
end of the day, just descriptive. And then there
was Lothar Meyer in Germany, who was. You could
argue Mendeleev's closest rival in this race.
Absolutely his closest rival. Meyer published
a table with 28 elements classified by their
valence in the exact same year, 1864. And by
1868, his version of the table was almost identical
to Mendeleev's. Almost identical. But here is
the critical defining difference that separated
the two of them and secured Mendeleev's legacy
forever. Was it? Meyer's table was passive. He
used it to describe the relationships between
the elements he already knew. He made absolutely
no predictions for elements that hadn't been
discovered yet. So Meyer was descriptive. Nuland's
system was flawed. And Mendeleev was prophetic.
That's the difference. Let's get to the genesis
of his periodic law then. It's fascinating that
it wasn't born out of some... abstract theoretical
quest. It came from a practical need. That's
one of the most remarkable parts of this story.
He was writing his definitive two -volume textbook
Principles of Chemistry between 1868 and 1870.
And he needed a way to teach it. He couldn't
teach his students inorganic chemistry effectively
without a logical, systematic way to classify
the elements. The textbook literally forced the
discovery. He needed a way to organize his thoughts,
and he ended up creating a universal law. Which
leads us to that legendary anecdote. The dream.
Ah, the dream. It's a beautiful piece of scientific
folklore reported by his friend in Ostransov.
Mendeleev claimed he saw the entire arrangement,
the complete periodic system, in a dream. And
he just woke up and wrote it all down. Woke up,
immediately transcribed it, and apparently only
needed to make one small correction later on.
You know, whether that was a literal dream or
just a dramatic retelling of a sudden subconscious
breakthrough after months of intense mental sorting,
it definitely captures that eureka moment. It
does. And the formal announcement followed very
quickly. It was presented to the Russian Chemical
Society on March 6, 1869. The title was The Dependence
Between the Properties of the Atomic Weights
of the Elements. And this presentation, it wasn't
just a table of elements. It was more like a
manifesto. It was a manifesto. It contained the
famous eight pillars of the periodic law, and
they are the core evidence of his genius. We
really need to spend some time here detailing
what these pillars actually declare. to the scientific
world. Let's do it. These eight points are what
elevate his work so far above everyone else's
attempts. Okay, so, pillar one. This established
the fundamental relationship. Elements, when
you arrange them by increasing atomic weight,
show an apparent periodicity of properties. That's
the cornerstone, the basic definition of the
periodic law. Exactly. Then, point two focused
on grouping. He showed that similar chemical
properties appear when the atomic weights are
either Very similar. Think of metals like platinum,
iridium and osmium or when they increase in a
regular way. Like the alkaline metals, potassium,
rubidium, cesium. Right. This justified grouping
the elements into what we now call families or
groups. And point three tied that grouping back
to chemical behavior. Yes. Stating that the arrangement
correlates with their valencies and their distinctive
chemical properties. He was establishing those
familiar patterns you see in a series like lithium,
beryllium, boron. carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine.
He was making sense of the reactive potential
of everything. Point four is a bit of a fascinating
detour, almost into cosmology. It is. He observed
that the most widely diffused elements, the ones
that are most common here on Earth, and, he presumed,
in the universe, also happen to have the smallest
atomic weights. So he's linking the microscale
pattern of his table to the macroscale composition
of the cosmos. He's thinking big. And then came
point five, which is really the philosophical
core of his law. He declared, and this is a near
quote, the magnitude of the atomic weight determines
the character of the element. Just as the magnitude
of the molecule determines the character of a
compound body. Precisely. This was him declaring
that his table wasn't just a convenient chart.
It was a universal determinative law. Atomic
weight dictates identity. And that conviction,
that absolute certainty, leads directly to point
six. This is the revolutionary step. This is
the one that sets him apart from Meyer and Newlands.
The crucial prediction. He stated confidently
that we must expect the discovery of many yet
unknown elements. He didn't just leave it at
that, did he? He wasn't vague. Not at all. He
got highly specific. He predicted two elements
that would be like aluminum and silicon and even
stated their atomic weights would fall somewhere
between 65 and 75. So he deliberately leaves
gaps in his own table. And in doing so, he turns
those gaps from signs of incomplete knowledge
into signs of structural necessity. He's saying
the gaps prove the system. They don't undermine
it. That is astonishing confidence. He's saying
the elements might be missing, but my system
is complete. But for me, 0 .7 is the real intellectual
paradigm shift. Ah, yes. The idea that atomic
weights could be amended by knowing the elements
around them. This is where his genius truly shines.
He used this logic to challenge the accepted
atomic weight of tellurium. Right. At the time,
tellurium's weight was measured at 128. Iodine
was 127. So if you went strictly by weight, tellurium
would come after iodine. But chemically, that
made no sense. Tellurium clearly belonged to
the group with oxygen and sulfur before iodine
and the halogens. So Mendeleev just argued that
the accepted weight had to be wrong. He suggested
it must be somewhere between 123 and 126. No,
he was actually wrong about the exact measurement.
Tellurium's modern weight is 127 .6, but he was
profoundly right about the order. He was, and
this is the key. He argued that the chemical
properties and the necessary periodicity of the
system must take precedence over imprecise measurement
data. He was subordinating the observer's data
to the system's law. That shift prioritizing
the structure over the measurement is what turned
the periodic table into a fundamental law of
nature. And finally, point eight just summarized
the whole system's utility. The characteristic
properties of elements that haven't even been
discovered yet could be precisely foretold from
their calculated atomic weights. It cemented
the table as the ultimate predictive tool. And
the power of that prediction became reality shockingly
fast. Incredibly fast. He had accurately predicted
the properties of three unknown elements, and
he gave them these temporary Sanskrit names,
eicosilicon, eicaluminium, and eicoboron. Which
were later discovered and named germanium, gallium,
and scandium. And his predictions weren't just
vague guesses. His detailed forecasts for Ica
aluminum, which became gallium, were just stunning.
He predicted its density, its melting point,
its behavior and solution. And they were virtually
identical to the properties that were later measured
by its discoverer, Paul -Emile Lecoq de Beaubadran
in 1875. That level of prophetic accuracy just
silenced any remaining cricks. It was undeniable
proof. He also used the system to correct what
was already known. the accepted values for uranium,
for instance. Before his work, uranium was thought
to have a valence of 3 and an atomic weight of
about 120. But when he tried to slot it into
his table based on those numbers, it just didn't
fit. It ruined the whole structure. So he just
decided the prevailing measurements had to be
wrong. He did. He doubled both values, proposing
a valence of 6 and an atomic weight of 240. This
placement fit perfectly into the system. And
of course, the modern atomic weight of uranium
is 238. He was right. He didn't just organize
the known, he corrected the misunderstood. A
perfect way to put it. Let's talk about the nomenclature
for a second. The Sanskrit prefixes, eka for
one, dv for two, tri for three. Why Sanskrit?
This is such a beautiful piece of intellectual
history. It ties his scientific structure to
this ancient, systematic way of thinking. The
sources suggest he was honoring a friend of his,
an eminent Sanskritist named Otto von Bittling.
But it's deeper than just a tribute to a friend,
isn't it? Much deeper. Ancient Indian grammarians,
particularly a figure named Peeni, were famous
for using these incredibly rigorous two -dimensional
systematic patterns to organize the sounds of
language. So Mendeley's use of Ika is an explicit
connection between his chemical matrix and a
tradition of systematic order that's millennia
old. Yes. He's linking the organization of matter
itself to the organization of language. It shows
he saw his work not just as chemistry, but as
this deep philosophical endeavor into fundamental
structure. And even after this immense triumph,
he knew the system wasn't finished. No, he was
puzzled by the lanthanides, the rare earth elements.
He couldn't quite figure out where to place them.
And he correctly anticipated that the table would
eventually need another entire row of heavy,
complex elements. Reactinides. Reactinides, which
only really appeared much later as new elements
were created artificially in labs. He established
this dynamic, living framework that could absorb
future discoveries and corrections. that he called
his discovery the periodic system. Because it
wasn't just a table. It was a system. A system
that dictates law, not just a collection of data.
Okay, so let's now fulfill the promise of this
deep dive and explore the other half of Mendeleev's
life. Because his scientific curiosity was absolutely
not limited to the elements. Not even close.
He was deeply and practically involved in the
political and industrial future of the Russian
Empire. His dedication to building up Russia's
scientific capacity. was clear from early on.
He was a co -founder of the Russian Chemical
Society in 1868. Helping to institutionalize
the very field he was in the process of revolutionizing.
But his interests were just too broad to be confined
to a single discipline. The Russian chemist Lev
Chugev characterized him perfectly. He said Mendeleev
wasn't just a genius chemist, but also a first
-class physicist and a fruitful researcher in
so many adjacent fields. And that versatility,
it all stemmed from his systematic approach to
problems. He applied that same thinking everywhere.
His intellectual rigor was also matched by a
willingness to jump into public philosophical
debates. Oh, he was a fierce rationalist. He
argued very strongly against the scientific claims
of spiritualism, which was surprisingly fashionable
among the Russian elite at the time. He wasn't
afraid to call it out. Not at all. He called
metaphysical idealism ignorant superstition,
and he was genuinely concerned about the effect
it was having on serious scientific study in
Russia. So he's not just a lab chemist. He's
actively out there championing empirical thinking,
using his scientific reputation to enforce intellectual
standards. And that same drive for standardization
and fundamental laws, it just permeated his work
in physics. He made theoretical contributions
that really anticipated later breakthroughs.
Like his work on the absolute boiling point.
In 1861, yeah, well before the standard was set,
he came up with a definition for it. How did
he define it? He defined it as the temperature
at which the cohesion of a... and its heat of
vaporization both become equal to zero. It's
the point where the liquid transforms into vapor
regardless of pressure or volume. He's basically
describing the point where the distinction between
liquid and gas just vanishes. He is. It's a moment
of unity between the states of matter. And this
definition strongly anticipated Thomas Andrews'
formal conception of critical temperature, which
became one of the most important concepts in
thermodynamics later in 1869. So he's finding
unity across the states of matter. just like
he found unity across the elements. He also developed
a formula for the expansion of liquids with heat,
which was very similar to Gay -Lussac's law for
the expansion of gases. Again, trying to find
a universal law that covered both liquids and
gases. But maybe his most peculiar excursion
into theoretical physics was his attempt to fit
the very structure of the cosmos into his periodic
law. I'm talking about his ether hypothesis.
This is such a great example of him trying to
apply his system to absolute... everything, even
speculative physics. So what was the idea? He
believed that if his periodic table was truly
complete, then there must be two inert chemical
elements that were even lighter than hydrogen.
Lighter than hydrogen. Yeah. He hypothesized
that the lighter of these two would be an all
-penetrating, almost massless gas. And this,
he proposed, was the aether, which physicists
at the time still thought was necessary for light
to travel through space. And the other one? The
slightly heavier one he called coronium. Now,
this idea was eventually abandoned with the rise
of quantum mechanics, but it just shows his absolute
dedication to making the periodic system the
ultimate organizing principle for everything.
All right, let's pivot now to his very practical
role as a servant of the Russian Empire. His
involvement in industry, especially petroleum,
was groundbreaking. His work for the state was
profound. He investigated the composition of
petroleum, and he was deeply involved in helping
to establish Russia's very first industrial oil.
refinery. This was a direct output of his drive
to modernize Russia's industrial base. And it
leads to probably his most insightful non -chemical
observation. He recognized very early on that
petroleum was far more valuable as a raw material
than it was as just fuel. This is the famous
quote, right? It is. He famously remarked that
burning crude petroleum just for heat or light
would be akin to firing up a kitchen stove with
banknotes. You have to put that in context. In
the 19th century, oil was mainly seen as a replacement
for coal or whale oil. And Mendeleev saw its
potential as a complex feedstock for thousands
of petrochemical products. He recognized its
vast economic value for chemical synthesis, a
realization that was decades ahead of its time.
Did he also have a controversial take on where
oil even comes from? He did. He did. His insight
wasn't just practical, it was theoretical geology.
Mendeleev was a staunch proponent of the abiogenic
hypothesis. Meaning oil isn't from dead dinosaurs.
Exactly. He concluded that hydrocarbons do not
originate from decayed biological matter, which
is the dominant theory today, but instead formed
deep within the Earth from inorganic materials
reacting under immense pressure. He wrote that
petroleum was born in the depths of the Earth,
and it is only there that we must seek its origin.
And you can see why a chemist who thought in
systems would lean that way. He saw the systematic
presence of hydrocarbons in various deep geological
layers and believed their sheer quantity couldn't
be easily explained by surface level biological
decay. An inorganic deep earth origin probably
seemed more fundamentally systematic to him.
I think so. Beyond oil, he was a key figure in
national economic policy. He was concerned with
the merchant navy, advising on ship design and
trade routes. He extensively researched agricultural
productivity, especially the efficacy of chemical
fertilizers. He was aiming to lift the entire
Russian economy. And politically, he championed
a protectionist stance on trade. How so? In 1891,
he successfully convinced the Ministry of Finance
to impose temporary tariffs on foreign imports.
It was an explicit protectionist policy designed
to shield and foster Russia's new infant industries,
textiles, metals, chemicals. Let them grow and
get competitive before opening them up to the
full force of Western European industry. Exactly.
He was an economic strategist committed to internal
development, and his commitment to science and
to his students was so fierce that it actually
cost him his professorship. He resigned. He resigned
from St. Petersburg University in 1890 after
a very heated dispute with Ministry of Education
officials over their heavy -handed treatment
of university students. He sacrificed his top
academic post over a matter of principle. Which
is incredible. But he didn't retire. His focus
on order and standardization led him directly
into his final and profoundly important career
role. That was his appointment as director of
the Bureau of Weights and Measures in 1893, a
post he held until his death. It sounds kind
of mundane, Bureau of Weights and Measures, but
his impact there was transformative. Absolutely
crucial for modernizing Russia. He is credited
with introducing and fully institutionalizing
the metric system across the entire Russian Empire.
This meant standardizing the fundamental prototypes,
the exact meter, the exact kilogram. And all
the measurement procedures across a vast nation.
It was filled with inconsistent local measures.
It required the exact same systematic law enforcing
mindset he applied to the periodic table. If
you want a modern, unified industrial state,
you need universal, precise standards. And Mendeleev
provided them. And just to round out his sheer
breadth of work, he even delved into military
chemistry. He did. He invented something called
pyrocollodion, which was a nitric cellulose based
smokeless powder commissioned specifically by
the Russian Navy. Navy ultimately didn't adopt
it, but it's just more proof of his ability to
pivot his genius to solve any high stakes technical
problem put in front of him. OK, so the public
record of his scientific and state services.
I mean, it's impeccable. But the sources reveal
this really turbulent personal life that created
immense institutional friction for him back home
in St. Petersburg. It really did. And it culminates
in perhaps the most famous snub in the history
of science. The personal drama really began with
what became known as the bigamy. Mendeleev was
known for being intense, and in 1876 he became,
well, the sources use the word, obsessed with
a young art student named Anna Ivanovna Popova.
And the courtship was highly dramatic. Very.
He proposed to her in 1881 and reportedly threatened
to commit suicide if she refused to marry him.
Which led to a very serious scandal. It did.
He married Anna Popova in early 1882. The problem
was his divorce from his first wife, Fyazva,
was only formally finalized by the church one
month after the second marriage took place. So
technically he was a bigamist. In the eyes of
the very powerful Russian Orthodox Church, he
was. The church legally mandated a waiting period
of at least seven years before a lawful remarriage
could happen after a divorce. And the controversy
had real lasting consequences. Oh, absolutely.
While the second marriage was eventually recognized
after a large payment to the local priest, which
caused its own public outcry, the scandal, combined
with his frequent political disagreements, contributed
directly to his failure to be admitted to the
prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences. Which
is just bizarre when you think about it. This
is a man who was elected a foreign member of
the Royal Society of London in 1892. He was honored
all across Europe with the Davy Medal and the
Copley Medal, the highest honors in British science.
And yet he was considered too socially and politically
disruptive for his own nation's premier scientific
body. It really highlights the difference between
international scientific merit and the conservative
social machinations of the imperial Russian establishment.
And that internal snub was really just a precursor
to the great international disappointment. The
Nobel Prize. The Nobel snub is just a notorious
tale of internal rivalry and politics. Mendeleev
was nominated three times in the final years
of his life, 1905, 1906, and 1907. In 1906, he
was agonizingly close. So close. The Nobel Committee
for Chemistry unanimously recommended him for
the prize, specifically citing his revolutionary
periodic system. Everything was set for him to
finally get the award. But then, at the final
full meeting of the Swedish Academy, things went
sideways. Peter Klassen, who was a dissenting
member of the committee, strongly opposed the
recommendation and proposed the French chemist
Henri Moisson instead. And the real political
muscle came from a scientist who wasn't even
on the committee. Svante Arrhenius. He'd won
the Nobel in 1903, held massive influence, and
he vehemently argued against Mendeleev. The official
reason he gave was that the discovery of the
periodic system was too old to be acknowledged
in 1906. But the sources suggest that Arrhenius'
motivation was anything but objective. It wasn't
really about the date of the discovery, was it?
Not at all. Contemporaries were convinced Arrhenius
was motivated by a personal grudge. A grudge
over what? Mendeleev had been a very public,
very outspoken critic of Arrhenius' electrolytic
dissociation theory, especially on the nature
of solutions. This was scientific rivalry taken
to the level of institutional sabotage. So the
Nobel Prize, this award intended to honor the
greatest achievements in science, was derailed
by one man's personal vendetta. That's the sad
reality of it. After a heated debate, Moissan
won the final vote by the slimmest possible margin.
Just one vote. And Arrhenius reportedly opposed
Mendeleev's nomination again in 1907, ensuring
that the father of the periodic table died without
the world's most famous scientific honor. It's
just a painful reminder that even at the highest
levels of recognition, politics and grudges can
sometimes prevail over pure merit. It really
is. OK, before we close the book on his incredible
life, we absolutely have to tackle the myth that
shadows him in popular culture. It's probably
more pervasive than his oil work or his metrology.
The great vodka origin myth. Exactly. The story
is a marketing powerhouse. You see it from certain
vodka brands. Russian Standard is a big one,
claiming that Mendeleev, through his scientific
research, established the 40 percent alcohol
standard for Russian imperial vodka. It's a lovely
picture, isn't it? The world's greatest chemist
perfecting the national drink. But what is the
documented truth based on the historical records?
The myth is unequivocally 100 percent false.
The historical documents are crystal clear on
this. The 40 % standard, technically 40 degrees
by volume, was introduced by the Russian government
way back in 1843. And Mendeleev was how old then?
He was nine years old. He had absolutely zero
influence on its adoption. So where's the confusion
even come from? It seems to trace back to two
separate facts that just get wildly conflated
over time. That's exactly it. Fact one is his
1865 doctoral dissertation, which had that rather
dry title, A Discourse on the Combination of
Alcohol and Water. People hear that title and
they immediately think vodka. Of course. But
the dissertation itself had nothing to do with
vodka. It focused entirely on the volume changes
and properties of high concentration alcohol
solutions, generally above 70%, stuff relevant
for medical or industrial use, not for the popular
drink of the day. In fact, too, is his later
role as director of the Bureau of Weeds and Measures.
The myth suggests he set the quality standard
while he was there. Which is another complete
conflation. The bureau he directed from 1893
dealt with standardizing physical instruments
and measurements for trade. the kilogram, the
meter, things like that. It had absolutely no
jurisdiction over setting quality standards for
specific products like alcohol strength. His
role was about measurement accuracy, not regulating
the national beverage. Precisely. So Mendeleev's
connection to vodka is purely academic studying
high -strength ethanol solutions and bureaucratic
standardizing the weights that might be used
to measure grain or liquor for trade. He was
interested in metrology, not mixology. The myth
endures, but the facts are clear. So we've covered
just an immense range of influence today. Dmitry
Mendeleev began his journey defined by his mother's
resilience in the middle of Siberia. She went
on to organize the entire physical universe into
a predictive system, championed Russia's industrial
future and oil and trade policy, and defined
the standards of measurement for a vast empire.
And all the while battling these institutional
snubs and personal scandals. I think the unifying
lesson here, really. is that his scientific triumph
the periodic table it wasn't some isolated burst
of brilliance it was the product of a deep lifelong
commitment to systematic order and a belief that
underlying laws govern all chaotic appearances
exactly his core genius lay in the intellectual
audacity to use those patterns for prediction
he didn't just catalog what was known he forced
the world to acknowledge the existence of the
unknown The ECA elements. And critically, he
forced other chemists to prioritize the law of
periodicity over their own flawed measured data
for elements like tellurium and uranium. He's
the one who transformed chemistry from a descriptive
science into a predictive one. A truly fundamental
shift. And as you move forward with this knowledge,
we want to leave you with a final provocative
thought about the complexity of the man. Mendeleev
died in 1907 from influenza. His last recorded
words to his physician, which were reportedly
a quote from a Jules Verne novel, were, Doctor,
you have science, I have faith. Which is such
a fascinating final statement. It is. When you
consider his rigorous empiricism, his championing
of systematic science, and his fierce lifelong
battles against things like spiritualism, against
superstition. What does that final line truly
reveal? about his personal synthesis of it all.
Did the man who sought to scientifically define
all matter find in his final moments a boundary
between empirical knowledge and profound belief?
It's something to truly mull over. A profound
question indeed. We hope this deep dive into
the polymath genius of Dmitri Mendeleev has been
enlightening. Until the next time, we'll see
you then.