Dmitri Mendeleev

1834 – 1907 · Russia · Chemistry

Arranged the elements so precisely that he could describe ones nobody had found.

Summary^1,3

Mendeleev laid out the known elements by atomic weight and recurring properties, then did something audacious: he left gaps and predicted the properties of the missing elements. Gallium, scandium and germanium were discovered within fifteen years, matching his predictions closely enough to make the periodic law undeniable.

Achievements^1,4

Published the periodic table in 1869 with deliberate gaps and quantitative predictions
Predicted eka-aluminium (gallium), eka-boron (scandium) and eka-silicon (germanium) before discovery
Wrote Principles of Chemistry, the standard textbook for a generation
Set Russia's standard for vodka production and worked on petroleum refining and metrology

Principal works^1,3

Principles of ChemistryOn the Relationship of the Properties of the Elements to their Atomic Weights

How the work shapes the world today^2,4

The periodic table hangs in every science classroom on Earth and organises materials science, drug design, battery chemistry and semiconductor manufacturing — the search for lithium, cobalt and rare earths is navigation by his map. Element 101 is mendelevium. UNESCO made 2019 the International Year of the Periodic Table on its 150th anniversary.

Posterity and the family line^2,4

Mendeleev had two children by his first wife Feozva and four by Anna Popova, whom he married in a manner the Orthodox Church deemed bigamous — the Tsar reportedly said 'Mendeleev has two wives, but I have only one Mendeleev.'

3 people · 1 generations · 0 links with primary documentation

Lyubov Mendeleeva
Daughter
Actress; married the Symbolist poet Alexander Blok and became the muse of his Verses About the Beautiful Lady — linking Russia's greatest chemist to its greatest Symbolist poet.
Attested
Ivan Mendeleev
Son
Mathematician and his father's assistant; defended the family legacy through the Soviet period.
Attested
Vladimir Mendeleev
Son
Naval officer who worked on a national plan for regulating Russia's water levels.
Attested

Every link carries its own evidence. Documented means a register, will, archive or prize record names the relationship; attested rests on scholarly reference; contested is disputed between sources; and where the record runs out it is marked rather than filled in.

Continuity of ideas

Who shaped Dmitri Mendeleev, and who they shaped

Inherited from1

Antoine Lavoisier
1743 – 1794 · Chemistry
Conservation of mass and a rational nomenclature are the ground the periodic table stands on.

Passed the work to2

Alan MacDiarmid
1927 – 2007 · Chemistry
Conducting polymers exploit periodic-table logic about conjugation and doping.
Dorothy Hodgkin
1910 – 1994 · Chemistry
Periodicity underwrites the structural chemistry Hodgkin resolved by X-ray.

Sources and references

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