If you close your eyes right now and just picture
a standard high school chemistry classroom, there
is... There's basically one thing that is universally
hanging on the wall. Oh, yeah, the periodic table
of elements. I mean, you literally cannot have
a chemistry classroom without one. Right. It
functions as this, you know, ultimate map of
the physical universe. Yeah, and it just looks
so perfect. It's this incredibly colorful logical
grid where all the all the building blocks of
reality are just neatly boxed up. Organized perfectly
by weight and properties. Yeah, exactly. And
looking at it, the whole system seems so inevitable,
almost like I think it was just handed down to
us already etched in stone. I think it was always
meant to be there. Right. But for this deep dive,
we've actually been combing through the historical
sources, specifically excerpts and records from
the Wikipedia archives on Dmitri Mendeleev. And
the real mission today is to uncover the life
of the guy who actually dreamt this table up.
And you mean that quite literally with the dreaming
part. I really do. We'll get to that. Because
we all know the table, but the guy behind it,
wow. The contrast is just wild. pristine mathematical
order of that table on one hand, and then the
sheer chaos of Mendeleev's actual life on the
other. That's what makes this exploration so
compelling to me. Oh, for sure. The real story
of the periodic table is anything but neat and
orderly. Not even a little bit. So we are going
way beyond just protons and electrons today.
We're exploring a story that involves, you know,
surviving brutal Siberian tragedies. scientific
prophecies that honestly bordered on magic, a
genuinely scandalous love life. Which is always
fun. Right. And petty academic grudges that cost
him the ultimate prize in science. Plus, we're
even going to debunk a very famous myth about
Russian vodka along the way. It is really the
ultimate historical example of an individual
just desperately searching for order in a deeply
unpredictable world. OK, let's unpack this. Because
to understand the mind that organized the universe,
we have to start in a place that was completely
devoid of organization. We need to go to Siberia.
So if you're listening and you're imagining Mendeleev
as this privileged aristocrat, sitting in a plush
St. Petersburg parlor, stroking his beard and
pondering the cosmos. Just completely erase that
image. Yeah. Totally erase it. Dmitri Mendeleev
was born in 1834 in this tiny freezing village
near Tobolsk in Siberia. And he was born into
a family situation that was essentially a crucible
of relentless hardship. That really feels like
an understatement when you look at the raw numbers
from the sources. Oh, the numbers are staggering.
He was the youngest of 17 siblings, 17. It's
hard to even fathom. And the records note that
only 14 of them even survived long enough to
be baptized. Yeah. Now, literally from the very
moment he is born, death and tragedy are just
the baseline reality for this family. Yeah. Now,
his father, Ivan, was a school principal and
a teacher, which provided some level of stability
at first. Right. But shortly after Demetra was
born, his father went entirely blind. And consequently,
he lost his teaching position. So the family's
primary source of income just vanished overnight.
Which is terrifying. And that forces his mother,
Maria, to step up. in a massive way. I mean,
she had to go and restart her family's abandoned
glass factory just to keep all of them from starving.
She was clearly an incredibly resilient woman.
You have to be right. Absolutely. But the tragedies,
they just kept compounding when Dimitri was 13
years old. Two catastrophic things happened basically
back to back. First, his father passed away.
And then that glass factory, which was their
sole livelihood at this point, it completely
burned to the ground. It's just crushing. You
literally lose everything. And this is where
Maria makes a decision that honestly changes
the course of human history. She does. Instead
of giving up, she looks at young Dimitri. And
he had clearly shown some real academic promise
by this point. So she takes him on this. epic,
desperate journey. Just packs up and leaves Siberia.
Right, traveling thousands of miles across Russia
in 1849. And first, they go to Moscow, hoping
to get him into the university there. And Moscow
University rejects him. They just say no, and
she refuses to turn around. She pushes on to
St. Petersburg, aiming for his father's old school,
the main pedagogical institute. It's incredible
determination. It really makes me think of like
a struggling startup founder today. Yeah, that's
a good comparison. Like you're totally out of
money, your product just caught fire literally
in this case, and you have exactly enough cash
for a train ticket to make one final pitch to
an investor. She essentially bet the family's
remaining chips entirely on his brain. She bet
everything on his intellect. And her gamble actually
paid off in getting him enrolled. But the cost
was immense. Yeah, it was. Shortly after he was
finally accepted she passed away. And then Mendeleev
graduates, but he immediately contracts tuberculosis.
He gets so sick that he has to relocate all the
way down to the Crimean Peninsula by the Black
Sea just to try and recover in the milder climate.
So he's sidelined for years. Right. He doesn't
even make its way back to St. Petersburg to begin
his real academic career until 1857. Look at
the timeline of his early life. For you listening
to this, just process that sequence of events.
It is nothing but upheaval. Complete chaos. Constant
death, fire, rejection, cross -country migrations,
and then deadly illness. Which really connects
to a profound psychological theme when we analyze
his later scientific work. How so? Well, Mendeleev
grew up in a world of utter unpredictability.
Everything he loved was either taken from him
or destroyed. So it is deeply telling. that a
man whose early life was defined by that extreme
volatility became absolutely obsessed with finding
permanent, predictable order. Oh, wow. Yeah.
He was looking for the underlying rules of the
natural world, rules that couldn't burn down,
you know, rules that couldn't be taken away.
He was searching for an anchor. I love that perspective.
And that obsession with order is exactly what
leads him to his absolute masterpiece. The periodic
table. Yes. So let's move into the 1860s. He's
back in St. Petersburg. He's a professor and
he's writing a primistry textbook called Principles
of Chemistry. And context is super crucial here
to understand his breakthrough. At this point
in history, chemistry was still highly, highly
fragmented. Right, because there were only 56
known elements at the time. Exactly. And scientists
were discovering about one new element a year,
but it was just this growing pile of isolated
facts. It wasn't a system. Just random puzzle
pieces. Yeah. Now, other chemists, like John
Newlands and Lothar Meyer, they had noticed some
repeating patterns. Newlands even proposed a
law of octaves, where he noticed that certain
properties repeated every eighth element. Like
musical notes. Right. but nobody had truly cracked
the code to unify all of them into a single cohesive
predictive system. They were just staring at
the pieces they had on the table. But Mendeleev,
while he's working on this textbook, he's just
trying to figure out how to categorize these
elements in a way that actually makes sense for
his students. He just wanted a good teaching
tool. Yeah. And the story goes from the sources
that the ultimate breakthrough came to him in
his sleep. Which is wild. He later told a colleague,
and I quote, I saw in a dream a table. where
all elements fell into place as required. Awakening,
I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper.
It sounds almost mystical, like he somehow plugged
into the fundamental syntax of the universe while
he was napping. It really does. So in 1869, he
takes this and makes a formal presentation to
the Russian Chemical Society. He arranges the
elements by two critical metrics. Okay, what
are they? The first is their atomic weight, which
we now call relative atomic mass, and the second
is by their valence. Okay, let's pause there
because I really want to make sure we understand
how these two things intersect. What exactly
is valency in this context? Good question. Think
of valence as the number of, well, hands. an
atom has available to hold onto other atoms when
it forms a chemical bond. Hands, okay. Yeah.
For example, hydrogen has one hand, oxygen has
two, carbon has four. Got it. So if you simply
line up all 56 known elements in a single continuous
row based only on how heavy they are their atomic
weight, you just get a long confusing string
of metals and gases. Doesn't mean much. Right.
But if you track the hands at the exact same
time. Precisely. Mendeleev noticed that as the
elements got heavier, their valency, their number
of hands followed a repeating pattern. The properties
would rise, peak, and then drop back down. So
by hitting return on his list, every time that
pattern repeated, he transformed a single line
of elements into a two -dimensional grid, a table.
Oh, that makes so much sense. Yeah. and suddenly
elements with similar chemical behaviors stacked
up perfectly in the same vertical columns. And
here's is where it gets absolutely mind -blowing
for me because he didn't just organize the 56
elements they knew about. He deliberately left
blank spaces. This is the exact critical leap
from being just a good categorizer to being a
true visionary. Yeah. He arranged his table and
he noticed gaps in the mathematical pattern.
And instead of assuming his pattern was flawed,
we're trying to awkwardly force known elements
into those slots just to finish the puzzle. Which
is what most people would do, honestly. Right.
But he didn't. He assumed that there were elements
that simply hadn't been discovered yet. Here's
where it gets really interesting. Because anyone
can sort a complete deck of playing cards, right?
If I hand you a standard deck, you can put the
hearts together, the spades together, line them
up two through ace. But Mendeleev basically laid
out an incomplete deck, pointed to an empty space
on the table and said, the jack of hearts is
missing. Yes. It exists. You just haven't found
it yet. And when you finally do find it, it will
weigh exactly this much and it will interact
with other cards in exactly this way. How did
the scientific community react to that level
of confidence? Well, it was audacious. He wasn't
just predicting the mere existence of unknown
elements. He was dictating their highly specific
properties before anyone had ever even seen them.
It's like calling your shot in baseball, but
for chemistry. Exactly. He predicted three elements
in particular, which he temporarily named Eka
-aluminium, Eka -boron, and Eka -silicon. I noticed
that in the sources. Where does that prefix Eka
actually come from? It's Sanskrit for one. Yeah,
he used Sanskrit prefixes, aka, dv, try, meaning
one, two, or three spaces down in his table.
And it's widely believed he did this to honor
ancient Indian grammarians. Wait, grammarians,
not scientists? Right, specifically a scholar
named Panini, who had discovered complex two
-dimensional patterns in the sounds of language
centuries earlier. Wow. Mendeleev saw a direct
parallel between the syntax of human language
and the underlying syntax of physical matter.
Tying linguistics to atomic structure is just
brilliant. But he didn't stop at predicting the
unknown. I mean, he was so confident in this
matrix that he actively picked fights with the
accepted science of his day regarding the elements
they did know about. Oh, he was totally fearless
about it. When established elements didn't fit
his pattern, he flat out claimed the existing
measurements were wrong. That takes some nerve.
Uranium's a perfect example. At the time, uranium
was believed to have an atomic weight of around
1 ,220. But how does he justify just changing
a widely accepted weight out of nowhere? Like
you can't just cross out a number because it
ruins the aesthetic of your table. Right. No,
you can't. But he justified it through the chemical
behavior. If uranium weighed 120, it would have
to be placed in a column on the table where its
chemical properties like how it reacts with oxygen,
its valency. completely mismatched all the other
elements in that column. It would be the odd
one out. Exactly. So Mendeleev have argued that
the fundamental pattern of nature was more reliable
than the flawed measuring instruments of his
day. Wow. He theorized that uranium didn't have
a valency of three, as previously thought, but
a valency of six. And when you redo the math
with that assumption, the atomic weight doubles
to around 240. which drops it perfectly into
a column where the chemical behavior suddenly
makes total sense. So he was essentially telling
the established scientific community, your scales
are broken, my dream table is right. And the
crazy thing is, within his own lifetime, he was
completely vindicated. Scientists eventually
discovered gallium, scandium, and germanium.
The missing jacks of hearts. They perfectly matched
the specific weights and properties he had laid
out for eco -luminium, eco -boron, and eco -silicon
years earlier. It was an absolute triumph of
theoretical chemistry. But, you know, when you
run around telling the scientific establishment
that their measurements are wrong and your invisible
theoretical elements are right... You make enemies.
Oh, definitely. Even if you turn out to be completely
correct. Challenging the establishment bruises
egos. And from the sources, it seems like that
sheer unbending stubbornness didn't just stay
in his laboratory. It bled very deeply into his
personal life too. Yeah, his personal life was
exceptionally turbulent, especially when we get
to 1876. While he was still married to his first
wife, He met a woman named Anna Popova and fell
intensely in love with her. And he began courting
her aggressively, right? Very aggressively. The
sources actually say that by 1881, he was so
desperate to marry her that he threatened to
commit suicide if she refused his proposal. That
is incredibly intense and toxic, frankly. Very.
He eventually secured a divorce from his first
wife and married Anna in 1882. But the critical
issue here was the timeline. Oh. He married Anna
just one single month. after the divorce was
finalized. Which was a massive legal and social
violation back then in Russia. Huge. The Russian
Orthodox Church had incredibly strict rules regarding
divorce. You were explicitly required to wait
at least seven years after a divorce before you
could lawfully remarry. Yeah. So by jumping the
gun, Mendeleev was technically legally a bigamist.
And this private scandal had massive professional
repercussions for him. Because of the bigamy
controversy, despite being internationally famous,
as the man who basically mapped the elements,
he was repeatedly denied admission into the Russian
Academy of Sciences. They just locked him out
entirely. Yeah. The local establishment shunned
him. But the pettiness wasn't just limited to
Russia. No, it wasn't. We have to talk about
the stolen Nobel Prize, because this part of
the archive is wild to me. It remains one of
the most infamous snubs in the history of science.
Mendeleev was nominated for the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry nine times. Nine times. Across the
final three years of his life. 1905, 1906, and
1907. I mean the Nobel committee is looking at
his resume and he literally invented the periodic
table. It seems like the easiest decision in
the world. You would think so. And in 1906 the
Nobel committee for chemistry formally recommended
to the Swedish Academy that they award the prize
to Mendeleev. Okay. The chemistry section entirely
supported it, and usually the full academy just
rubber stamps the committee's choice as a formality.
But then enter a man named Svante Arrhenius.
Right. Svante Arrhenius was a highly influential
Swedish scientist. Now, he wasn't even on the
chemistry committee, but he wielded a massive
amount of power within the broader academy. Interesting.
And he aggressively lobbied the members to reject
Mendeleev. He argued publicly that the periodic
system was, quote, too old to be acknowledged
in 1906. Too old. That is a terrible excuse for
a timeless discovery. I mean, gravity is old,
but it still works. Exactly. And the sources
tell us exactly what was really going on behind
the scenes. Right, because it was personal. Very
personal. According to contemporaries, Arrhenius
was motivated by a bitter personal grudge. Years
earlier, Arrhenius had developed something called
dissociation theory. OK, what does that mean
in terms of chemistry? Just briefly. Basically,
dissociation theory proposed that when you dissolve
salts in water, they break apart into independent
electrically charged particles called ions. OK,
makes sense. But Mendeleev, who was a staunch
believer in strict chemical combinations and
definite proportions, thought this was total
nonsense. Oh, boy. Yeah, Mendeleev believed that
water and salts formed highly specific chemical
bonds called hydrates. He didn't buy the idea
of charged particles just floating around independently.
So he openly and harshly criticized Arrhenius's
work. And Arrhenius clearly never forgave him
for that public mockery. Nope. Arrhenius used
his immense influence to pressure the Academy.
And after heated arguments, they actually rejected
Mendeleev. They gave the prize to a French chemist.
Henri Moissat by a margin of exactly one single
vote. One vote? And Arrini has pulled the exact
same strings to block Mendeleev again the next
year in 1907. So wait, you're telling me this
man blueprints the fabric of the universe and
he gets canceled by the Swedish Academy because
of a petty high school level cafeteria grudge
over a disagreement about saltwater? Basically,
yeah. It raises a vital question about how we
view the history of science, honestly. Yeah,
we always love to imagine scientific progress
as this pure objective noble march toward absolute
truth. But this shows that the reality is that
science is conducted by flawed humans. It is
deeply entangled with human ego, personal jealousy,
and bureaucracy. Completely. But you know, while
the Nobel committee was busy stabbing him in
the back over bruised egos, Mendeleev didn't
really just sit around sulking. Oh, far from
it. He applied his genius to basically every
other industry he could get his hands on. He
was a prolific polymath. His brain didn't just
stop at theoretical chemistry. He looked at the
entire Russian empire as a system that desperately
needed optimizing. For instance, he is credited
with introducing the metric system to the Russian
Empire. Yes. He became the director of the Bureau
of Weights and Measures because he realized that
if Russia was going to compete globally, they
needed standardized, reliable measurements. And
he was also a huge visionary regarding natural
resources. He helped found the very first oil
refinery in Russia. Oh, wow. While most people
in the 1800s just saw petroleum as something
you burn for heat or light, Mendeleev recognized
its profound chemical value. He saw it as a vital
feedstock for petrochemicals, you know, the building
blocks for plastics, solvents, and medicines.
The Wikipedia sources have this amazing quote
from him where he states that burning petroleum
merely for fuel, quote, would be akin to firing
up a kitchen stove with banknotes. That's a great
quote. It is. He saw the hidden value before
anyone else, and it doesn't stop there. He also
invented pyrocollodium. Right. Which was a type
of smokeless powder commissioned by the Russian
Navy. And he studied agriculture to improve fertilizer
efficacy. He even spent time actively fighting
against the cultural rise of spiritualism. Yeah,
the seances and all that. Exactly. He argued
that seances and metaphysical idealism were just
ignorant superstitions holding back progress.
He was basically engaged in a one man crusade
to drag Russian society into the modern empirical
age. Which brings us to my favorite part, because
on top of all that, he basically invented modern
Russian vodka. Oh, boy. He's the guy who scientifically
calculated that the perfect vodka needs to be
exactly 40 % alcohol. I've literally seen that
in modern advertising campaigns. Yeah, I've seen
those too. It is a brilliant piece of marketing,
but it is entirely fiction. Wait, really? The
genius chemist formulating the perfect ratio
for the national drink isn't true at all? It
is a complete myth. The 40 % standard for Russian
vodka was actually introduced by the Russian
government in 1843. Okay. And if you check the
timeline, Medvedev was only nine years old in
1843. A mathematically gifted nine -year -old,
perhaps. That's certainly not setting national
liquor laws. Definitely not. Now, it is true
that he was the head of the Bureau of Weights
and Measures later. in the 1890s. But that agency
was in charge of standardizing trade weights,
like making sure a kilogram was truly a kilogram.
Right. They were not setting recipes or quality
standards for distilleries. And while his 1865
doctoral dissertation was indeed titled, A Discourse
on the Combinations of Alcohol and Water. Ah,
so he did write about alcohol. He did, but it
only analyzed medical strength alcohol concentrations
of over 70%. He never wrote a single word about
vodka. That is so funny. We have a guy who fundamentally
mapped the elements, advanced the metric system,
foresaw the petrochemical industry, and engineered
naval explosives. But society collectively decides
to credit him with inventing the perfect ratio
for vodka. It just goes to show that humans love
a tidy, entertaining legend much more than a
complex reality. Yeah, we really do. The vodka
story is a fun anecdote. But Mendeleev's true
superpower was his incredible ability to synthesize
diverse, seemingly unrelated fields. He saw the
hidden interconnectedness of macroeconomics,
heavy industry, and microscopic molecular chemistry
in a way that very few thinkers ever have. He
saw the whole board. It's an incredible arc.
I mean, looking back at what we've covered, we've
gone from a tragic, freezing Siberian childhood,
surviving the death of his parents and a burning
factory, to literally mapping the invisible elements
of the universe. Yeah. He fought through academic
pettiness, survived his own self -inflicted scandals,
and became a true industrial visionary. And he
worked relentlessly until the very end. Mendeley
died of influenza in 1907 at the age of 72 in
St. Petersburg. The sources record his final
words, spoken to his physician right before he
passed. He said, Doctor, you have science, I
have faith. Wow. Which is such a poignant final
thought from a man who spent his entire life
quantifying the physical world. It really is.
And, you know, as we wrap up this deep dive,
there's a final reflection I really want to leave
you the listener to mull over. Go for it. When
we look at Mendeleev's life. His absolute greatest
stroke of genius wasn't just his ability to categorize
the things he already knew. His true brilliance
was his deep respect for what he didn't know.
The empty spaces. Exactly. He had the courage
to leave blank spaces on his table. He didn't
let his ego force a flawed puzzle together just
to have a finished product. That's a great point.
So as you look at your own life, your own work,
or just the endless stream of information you
consume every day, ask yourself, Where are you
trying to force the data to fit? Where are you
jumping to conclusions just to avoid the discomfort
of not knowing? Maybe, instead of forcing a bad
fit, we should all practice Mendeleev's courage,
the courage to leave a blank space and simply
trust that the truth will eventually fill it.
What an amazing thought to end on. I mean, if
you ever find yourself staring at that periodic
table on a classroom wall again, you'll know
it's not just a list of chemicals. It's a monument
to the power of empty space. Thank you so much
for joining us on this custom deep dive. We'll
catch you next time.