UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS HIGH SCHOOLNatural Science DepartmentAcademic Year 2012 2013

Ups & Downs Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was born to Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev and Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleev, in the village of Verkhnie Aremzyani, Russian Empire, near Tobolsk in Siberia, on the 8th of February, 1834. Despite being raised as an Orthodox Christian, he later rejected the religion and embraced a form of deism.He is thought to be the youngest of 11-17 siblings. His father was a teacher by profession. He teaches Fine Arts, Politics and Philosophy. However, he became blind and lost his teaching career. His mother was forced to work and she restarted her familys abandoned glass factory. By the time Dmitri was 13, after losing his Father and his mothers glass factory, he attended the Gymnasium in Tobolsk.In 1849, his family transferred to Saint Pertersburg, where he entered the Main Pedagogical Institute, a year after. After his graduation, he contracted tuberculosis that made him to move the Crimean Peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea in 1855. While there, he became a science master of the Simferpol gymnasium No. 1. He returned with fully restored health to Saint Petersburg in 1857.During the years of 1859 and 1861, he worked on the capillarity of liquids and the workings of the spectroscope in Heidelberg. In late August 1861, he wrote his first book on the spectroscope. On the 4th of April, 1892, he became engaged to Feozva Nikitichna Leshcheva, and they got married on 27th of April, 1962 at Nickolaev Engineering Institutes church in Saint Petersburg, He became a professor at the Saint Petersburg Technical Institute and Saint Petersburg State University in 1864 and 1855, respectively. In 1865, he became a doctor of Science for his dissertation "On the Combinations of Water with Alcohol". He achieved tenure in 1867, and by 1871 had transformed Saint Petersburg into an internationally recognized center for chemistry research. In 1876, he became obsessed with Anna Ivanova Popova and began courting her; in 1881 he proposed to her and threatened suicide if she refused. His divorce from Leshcheva was finalized one month after he had married Popova (on 2 April) in early 1882. Even after the divorce, Mendeleev was technically a bigamist; the Russian Orthodox Church required at least seven years before lawful re-marriage. His divorce and the surrounding controversy contributed to his failure to be admitted to the Russian Academy of Sciences (despite his international fame by that time). His daughter from his second marriage, Lyubov, became the wife of the famous Russian poet Alexander Blok. His other children were son Vladimir (a sailor, he took part in the notable Eastern journey of Nicholas II) and daughter Olga, from his first marriage to Feozva, and son Ivan and a pair of twins from Anna.Though Mendeleev was widely honored by scientific organizations all over Europe, including the Copley Medal from the Royal Society of London, he resigned from Saint Petersburg University on 17 August 1890.In 1893, he was appointed Director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures. It was in this role that he was directed to formulate new state standards for the production of vodka. As a result of his work, in 1894 new standards for vodka were introduced into Russian law and all vodka had to be produced at 40% alcohol by volume.Mendeleev also investigated the composition of petroleum, and helped to found the first oil refinery in Russia. He recognized the importance of petroleum as a feedstock for petrochemicals. He is credited with a remark that burning petroleum as a fuel "would be akin to firing up a kitchen stove with bank notes."In 1905, Mendeleev was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The following year the Nobel Committee for Chemistry recommended to the Swedish Academy to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1906 to Mendeleev for his discovery of the periodic system. The Chemistry Section of the Swedish Academy supported this recommendation. The Academy was then supposed to approve the Committee choice as it has done in almost every case. Unexpectedly, at the full meeting of the Academy, a dissenting member of the Nobel Committee, Peter Klason, proposed the candidacy of Henri Moissan whom he favored. Svante Arrhenius, although not a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, had a great deal of influence in the Academy and also pressed for the rejection of Mendeleev, arguing that the periodic system was too old to acknowledge its discovery in 1906. According to the contemporaries, Arrhenius was motivated by the grudge he held against Mendeleev for his critique of Arrhenius's dissociation theory. After heated arguments, the majority of the Academy voted for Moissan. The attempts to nominate Mendeleev in 1907 were again frustrated by the absolute opposition of Arrhenius.In 1907, Mendeleev died at the age of 72 in Saint Petersburg from influenza. The crater Mendeleev on the Moon, as well as element number 101, the radioactive mendelevium, are named after him.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Mendelejevs_periodiska_system_1871.png http://englishrussia.com/images/mendeleev_house/0.jpg