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Dmitri Mendeleev
Life Details
Born: 8th February (Old Style: 27th January) 1834. Died: 2nd February (Old Style: 20th January) 1907.
Introduction
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was a Russian chemist who is best known for being one of the scientists who came up with both Periodic law, and also the periodic table of elements. He was not the only one working on this, but he is known for placing them in the order they are in in their current state.
Early Life & Education
Born to his parents, Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev and Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, Dmitri was raised as an Othodox Christian, where his mother encouaged him to "patiently search divine and scientific truth".
Dmitri was the youngest of 17 siblings, with issues surrounding some of his siblings due to infant death. The number of siblings he has is still an historic dispute as it differs among sources. He attended schools in St. Petersburg where he graduated in 1855 at the Main Pedagogical Institute. He then got a teaching position at Simferopol in Crimea.
He lasted two months there before heading back to St. Petersburg. He continued his education, and received a Master's degree in 1856. He then started research in organic chemistry. This is where he left Russia to study abroad at the University of Heidelberg.
Mendeleev decided not to work with the prominent chemists of the university, including Robert Bunsen, Emil Erlenmeyer and August Kekulé. Instead, he set up his own laboratory in his apartment. He attended the International Chemistry Congress in Karlsruhe, where he met and established contacts with many of Europe's leading chemists.
Periodic Law
Mendeleev began to teach inorganic chemistry, but couldn't find a decent book that met his needs. He decided he would write one, and the result was the Osnovy khimii (1868-71; The Principles of Chemistry). It would later be a classic, having many editions and translations.
When Mendeleev composed the chapter on the halogen elements, he compared the properties of the this group (chlorine and its analogs) and the group of alkali metals such as sodium. He discovered that their atomic weights were progressive and exhibited similar properties. From this discovery, Mendeleev could state that the order of atomic weights could be used to arrange the elements within each group, and also to arrange the groups themselves.
This would later be known as periodic law, and it was announced before the Russian Chemical Society in March 1869. This law allowed him to build up a systematic table of the then known 70 elements. He also proposed changes that would see predicted elements and unknown elements to be grouped together. This system didn't sit well with chemists of the time, until the discovery of gallium (1875), scandium (1879) and germanium (1886). When these were place using Mendeleev's periodic law, the periodic table and system was granted with wide acceptance.
Later Life & Death
Not content with just being a scientist, Mendeleev also contributed to metrology, the science of weights and measurements. He worked as the director of the Central Bureau of Weights and Measures. Through this, he was able to combine his lifetime interests in science and industry and to integrate Russia in the Western world.
He died in 1907, with his last works being that he thought some pairs of adjacent elements should be reversed. He suggested swapping cobalt with nickel and argon with potassium. It wasn't until 6 years after his death in 1913 that chemists decided this was acceptable.
