50 free Dmitri Mendeleev trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Dmitri Mendeleev was the youngest of a huge Siberian family, walked across Russia with his mother to find a university, and in 1869 arranged the 56 known elements into a table that left gaps for elements nobody had seen, then described them so precisely that gallium and germanium fitted perfectly when they turned up. He also married twice at once, was blackballed from the Nobel Prize by a grudge, and did not, despite the legend, invent 40 percent vodka. This quiz covers the chemistry and the man. Easy questions ask what he is famous for and which element bears his name. Harder ones want the town near his birthplace, the prefix he borrowed from Sanskrit for the missing elements, the German rival who published a near-identical table months later, the element whose atomic weight he doubled, the poet who married his daughter, the Swedish chemist who blocked his Nobel, his last words and why the vodka story is a myth. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's biography of Dmitri Mendeleev, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Made for chemistry teachers, students and quiz hosts. Related quizzes: Chemistry, Periodic Table and Famous Scientists.
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Q 01What is Mendeleev best known for creating?
A version of the periodic table of elements
He formulated the periodic law and used it to correct known elements and predict unknown ones.
Q 02Which synthetic element, atomic number 101, is named after Mendeleev?
Mendelevium
It is a radioactive actinide usually made by bombarding einsteinium with alpha particles.
Q 03Which three elements, unknown in 1869, did Mendeleev correctly predict the properties of?
Germanium, gallium and scandium
He called them ekasilicon, ekaaluminium and ekaboron.
Q 04Near which Siberian city was Mendeleev born, in the village of Verkhnie Aremzyani?
Tobolsk
His mother's family were Tobolsk merchants who founded the first Siberian printing house.
Q 05How did the Mendeleev family acquire its surname?
Ivan was given it at seminary, after a local landlord
Priests' children of the time were given new family names at the theological seminary; the grandfather was a priest named Sokolov.
Q 06Mendeleev was the youngest of roughly how many siblings?
17
According to his brother, only 14 lived long enough to be baptised; the exact number is still disputed.
Q 07What business did Mendeleev's mother restart to support the family after his father went blind?
A glass factory
It burned down, and after his father's death the 13-year-old entered the Tobolsk gymnasium.
Q 08Which institution refused Mendeleev in 1849 after his mother took him across Russia to enrol?
Moscow University
Mother and son went on to Saint Petersburg, where he entered the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1850.
Q 09Why did Mendeleev move to the Crimean Peninsula in 1855?
He had contracted tuberculosis
He taught science at the Simferopol Gymnasium and returned to St Petersburg in 1857 with his health restored.
Q 10In which German city did Mendeleev work on capillarity and the spectroscope between 1859 and 1861?
Heidelberg
On his return he published a textbook on organic chemistry that won the Demidov Prize.
Q 11What was the subject of the 1865 doctoral dissertation that made Mendeleev a Doctor of Science?
The combinations of water with alcohol
It discussed only medical-strength concentrations above 70 percent, and never mentioned vodka.
Q 12How many elements were known in 1863, when new ones were turning up at about one a year?
56
Mendeleev's 1869 table left gaps for the ones still missing.
Q 13Which English chemist's "Law of Octaves" of 1864 anticipated periodicity but was mocked until 1887?
John Newlands
His proposal even hinted at germanium, but the Society of Chemists ignored it for two decades.
Q 21Which pair of elements did Mendeleev correctly order even though the heavier one came first?
Tellurium and iodine
He wrongly assumed the accepted atomic weights were at fault; tellurium really is heavier at 127.6.
Q 22What did Mendeleev himself call his table?
The Periodic System
He is now often called the Father of the Periodic Table.
Q 23What did Mendeleev threaten when he proposed to Anna Popova in 1881?
Suicide if she refused
He married her a month before his divorce was final, making him technically a bigamist under Church rules.
Q 14What textbook (1868–70) was Mendeleev writing when he devised the periodic table?
Principles of Chemistry
It became the definitive chemistry textbook of its era.
Q 15How did Mendeleev claim to have envisioned the complete arrangement of the elements?
In a dream
"Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary."
Q 16On what date did Mendeleev formally present his table of elements to chemists in St Petersburg?
6 March 1869
The paper was titled The Dependence between the Properties of the Atomic Weights of the Elements.
Q 17Which German chemist published a near-identical periodic table months after Mendeleev, without predicting new elements?
Lothar Meyer
Mendeleev's own version came out first, in a Russian-language journal.
Q 18Which element's atomic weight did Mendeleev double, from about 120 to 240, to fit his table?
Uranium
The modern value is 238, close to his corrected figure.
Q 19From which language did Mendeleev borrow the prefixes eka, dvi and tri for his predicted elements?
Sanskrit
He may have been honouring the grammarian Panini, whose editor Otto von Böhtlingk was a friend and colleague.
Q 20In which years were gallium and germanium discovered, fitting perfectly into Mendeleev's gaps?
1875 and 1886
Their discovery silenced those who had dismissed his predictions.
Q 24Why was Mendeleev technically a bigamist when he married Anna Popova in 1882?
His divorce came a month later, and the Church required a seven-year wait
The scandal helped keep him out of the Russian Academy of Sciences despite his fame.
Q 25Which famous Russian poet married Mendeleev's daughter Lyubov?
Alexander Blok
His son Vladimir, a sailor, took part in the Eastern journey of the future Nicholas II.
Q 26Which two Royal Society medals did Mendeleev receive, in 1882 and 1905?
The Davy Medal and the Copley Medal
He was elected a Foreign Member of the Society in 1892.
Q 27Which post did Mendeleev hold from 1893 until his death?
Director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures
He standardised prototypes and inspection systems and is credited with bringing the metric system to Russia.
Q 28Burning petroleum as fuel, Mendeleev said, would be akin to doing what?
"Firing up a kitchen stove with bank notes"
He helped found Russia's first oil refinery and saw petroleum as a feedstock for petrochemicals.
Q 29Which Swedish scientist's grudge over a critique helped block Mendeleev's 1906 Nobel Prize?
Svante Arrhenius
The committee had recommended Mendeleev, but the academy chose Henri Moissan by a single vote.
Q 30Who was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry instead of Mendeleev, by a margin of one vote?
Henri Moissan
Arrhenius argued the periodic system was too old to be honoured in 1906.