50 Fun Facts About Dmitri Mendeleev

What is Mendeleev best known for creating?

He formulated the periodic law and used it to correct known elements and predict unknown ones.

Which synthetic element, atomic number 101, is named after Mendeleev?

It is a radioactive actinide usually made by bombarding einsteinium with alpha particles.

Which three elements, unknown in 1869, did Mendeleev correctly predict the properties of?

He called them ekasilicon, ekaaluminium and ekaboron.

Near which Siberian city was Mendeleev born, in the village of Verkhnie Aremzyani?

His mother's family were Tobolsk merchants who founded the first Siberian printing house.

How did the Mendeleev family acquire its surname?

Priests' children of the time were given new family names at the theological seminary; the grandfather was a priest named Sokolov.

Mendeleev was the youngest of roughly how many siblings?

According to his brother, only 14 lived long enough to be baptised; the exact number is still disputed.

What business did Mendeleev's mother restart to support the family after his father went blind?

It burned down, and after his father's death the 13-year-old entered the Tobolsk gymnasium.

Which institution refused Mendeleev in 1849 after his mother took him across Russia to enrol?

Mother and son went on to Saint Petersburg, where he entered the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1850.

Why did Mendeleev move to the Crimean Peninsula in 1855?

He taught science at the Simferopol Gymnasium and returned to St Petersburg in 1857 with his health restored.

In which German city did Mendeleev work on capillarity and the spectroscope between 1859 and 1861?

On his return he published a textbook on organic chemistry that won the Demidov Prize.

What was the subject of the 1865 doctoral dissertation that made Mendeleev a Doctor of Science?

It discussed only medical-strength concentrations above 70 percent, and never mentioned vodka.

How many elements were known in 1863, when new ones were turning up at about one a year?

Mendeleev's 1869 table left gaps for the ones still missing.

Which English chemist's "Law of Octaves" of 1864 anticipated periodicity but was mocked until 1887?

His proposal even hinted at germanium, but the Society of Chemists ignored it for two decades.

What textbook (1868–70) was Mendeleev writing when he devised the periodic table?

It became the definitive chemistry textbook of its era.

How did Mendeleev claim to have envisioned the complete arrangement of the elements?

"Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary."

On what date did Mendeleev formally present his table of elements to chemists in St Petersburg?

The paper was titled The Dependence between the Properties of the Atomic Weights of the Elements.

Which German chemist published a near-identical periodic table months after Mendeleev, without predicting new elements?

Mendeleev's own version came out first, in a Russian-language journal.

Which element's atomic weight did Mendeleev double, from about 120 to 240, to fit his table?

The modern value is 238, close to his corrected figure.

From which language did Mendeleev borrow the prefixes eka, dvi and tri for his predicted elements?

He may have been honouring the grammarian Panini, whose editor Otto von Böhtlingk was a friend and colleague.

In which years were gallium and germanium discovered, fitting perfectly into Mendeleev's gaps?

Their discovery silenced those who had dismissed his predictions.

Which pair of elements did Mendeleev correctly order even though the heavier one came first?

He wrongly assumed the accepted atomic weights were at fault; tellurium really is heavier at 127.6.

What did Mendeleev himself call his table?

He is now often called the Father of the Periodic Table.

What did Mendeleev threaten when he proposed to Anna Popova in 1881?

He married her a month before his divorce was final, making him technically a bigamist under Church rules.

Why was Mendeleev technically a bigamist when he married Anna Popova in 1882?

The scandal helped keep him out of the Russian Academy of Sciences despite his fame.

Which famous Russian poet married Mendeleev's daughter Lyubov?

His son Vladimir, a sailor, took part in the Eastern journey of the future Nicholas II.

Which two Royal Society medals did Mendeleev receive, in 1882 and 1905?

He was elected a Foreign Member of the Society in 1892.

Which post did Mendeleev hold from 1893 until his death?

He standardised prototypes and inspection systems and is credited with bringing the metric system to Russia.

Burning petroleum as fuel, Mendeleev said, would be akin to doing what?

He helped found Russia's first oil refinery and saw petroleum as a feedstock for petrochemicals.

Which Swedish scientist's grudge over a critique helped block Mendeleev's 1906 Nobel Prize?

The committee had recommended Mendeleev, but the academy chose Henri Moissan by a single vote.

Who was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry instead of Mendeleev, by a margin of one vote?

Arrhenius argued the periodic system was too old to be honoured in 1906.

How many times was Mendeleev nominated for the Chemistry Nobel in his last three years?

The nominations came in 1905, 1906 and 1907; he never won.

Of what did Mendeleev die in Saint Petersburg in 1907, aged 72?

His last words to his doctor were reportedly "Doctor, you have science, I have faith", possibly a Jules Verne quotation.

What smokeless powder based on nitrocellulose did Mendeleev invent for the Russian Navy?

The Navy never adopted it, though he organised its manufacture in 1892.

What did Mendeleev conclude about the origin of petroleum?

"Petroleum was born in the depths of the earth, and it is only there that we must seek its origin," he wrote.

What is Mendeleev credited with introducing to the Russian Empire as director of weights and measures?

He did it as director of the Central Bureau of Weights and Measures from 1892.

Why is the popular story that Mendeleev fixed vodka at 40 percent a myth?

His bureau standardised trade weights and measures, not production quality, and he never wrote about vodka.

Which two hypothetical elements lighter than hydrogen did Mendeleev propose in his conception of the aether?

The idea appeared in his 1902 attempt at a chemical understanding of the world aether.

Which body was Mendeleev among the founders of in 1868?

It was to this society that he presented his periodic system the following March.

Why did Mendeleev resign his professorship at St Petersburg University in 1890?

He had transformed the university into an internationally recognised centre for chemistry by 1871.

What did Mendeleev's son Ivan say his father had embraced after leaving the Orthodox Church?

He publicly debated against spiritualism, calling metaphysical idealism ignorant superstition.

Where is the large lunar crater named after Mendeleev?

A mineral, mendeleevite-Ce, was also named for him in 2010.

What did Mendeleev's mother urge him to "patiently search" for?

He was raised an Orthodox Christian.

What was the maiden name of Mendeleev's mother, Maria Dmitrievna?

His father Ivan taught fine arts, politics and philosophy at the Tambov and Saratov gymnasiums; Ivan's own father was a priest named Sokolov.

Whom did Mendeleev marry in April 1862 in the church of the Nikolaev Engineering Institute?

The couple had a son Vladimir, a sailor, and a daughter Olga; the marriage ended in a controversial divorce two decades later.

Whom did Mendeleev succeed as teacher of inorganic chemistry at St Petersburg University in 1867?

He gained tenure that year and by 1871 had turned the city into an internationally recognised centre for chemistry research.

In 1891 Mendeleev helped persuade the Russian Finance Ministry to adopt what economic measure?

He wanted to foster Russia's infant industries, having compared its oil business unfavourably with Pennsylvania's on his travels.

Which English city's Literary and Philosophical Society made Mendeleev an honorary member in 1889?

The next year he quit his St Petersburg professorship after clashing with the Ministry of Education over how students were treated.

What is the street in front of St Petersburg's Twelve Collegia building called?

In his day the building housed the Head Pedagogical Institute; it is now the centre of Saint Petersburg State University.

Which dissenting Nobel Committee member proposed a rival at the 1906 academy meeting that rejected Mendeleev?

The Chemistry Section had backed Mendeleev; the academy, which almost always approves the committee's choice, overturned it after heated argument.

Since which year has the Russian Academy of Sciences occasionally awarded a Mendeleev Golden Medal?

Other tributes include a memorial museum apartment in the Twelve Collegia building and a Google doodle for his 182nd birthday in 2016.