In the JINR Museum

The last of the cohort of natural philosophers

On 7 February, on the eve of the Russian Science Day, a lecture "Four programmes of Dmitry Mendeleev" by the senior researcher of the St. Petersburg branch of S.I.Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology Igor S.DMITRIEV was held in the JINR Museum of History of Science and Technology.

Doctor of Science in Chemistry, for almost 30 years, he has headed D.I.Mendeleev Museum-Archive of St. Petersburg State University. Last year, on the 190th anniversary of the great chemist's birth, the publishing house of St. Petersburg University released Igor Dmitriev's second book "A trap for genius". This is a collection of essays reflecting different periods of Dmitry Mendeleev's life - before the discovery of the Periodic Law, work on the Periodic Table of Elements, the search for the world ether, episodes of biography, not included in the published biographies of the scientist. The lecture was full of interesting facts from the life of our great compatriot, quotes from his diaries and debunked some well-known myths about him.

"What else I've never had to do!" Igor Dmitriev quoted Mendeleev's words, citing in support of his articles on painting by A.I.Kuindzhi and papers on economics, emphasizing that the scientist had lived a very rich life. And in his lecture, Igor Dmitriev told about four programmes, on which Mendeleev had spent years of his life: the investigation of capillarity, the classification of chemical elements, the search for the world ether, the theory of solutions. According to the speaker, Dmitry Mendeleev was not a scientist in today's sense of the word, but one of the last great natural philosophers with a global approach to meeting issues.

Mendeleev preferred to explore topics that fascinated many people in an unconventional way, or to do things that did not interest others. No one had ever directed him, "I am a free Cossack and will be free in any case," he said. Graduating from the university with a gold medal, although he had spent most of the school years in the infirmary, suffering from hemoptysis, Mendeleev was entitled to a two-year internship abroad at public expense. He chose the University of Heidelberg, where he started to study capillarity. Why this particular subject? He believed that the chemical bonding energy of crystals, the structure and properties of which he had previously studied and the molecular forces were of the same nature. Two years were not enough for him to clarify this issue, but in the meantime, he discovered the critical temperature of the transition of liquid to vapor in a closed volume.

After having returned to St. Petersburg, Dmitry Mendeleev took up teaching and his Doctoral thesis was dedicated to compounds of alcohol and water that gave rise to the legend of his invention of vodka. His doctoral degree allowed him to head the department and he started to head the Department of General Chemistry. Having failed to recommend a good textbook to students, he wrote the first Russian textbook on organic chemistry. "My work is not a textbook: it is rather a statement of goals, a set of my views," he wrote in his diary.

As Igor Dmitriev stated, the Periodic Law, Evolutionary Theory and some other discoveries that required knowledge of large factual material were made by people in their early 30s and discoveries-insights by young people like A.Einstein and N.Bohr that formulated their theories were made before the age of 30. D.I.Mendeleev made his Periodic Law that consisted of two discoveries, that is, the properties of elements depend on their atomic weights and this dependence is periodic, on the first 51 elements. Work on the formation of the table was also carried out on elements with atomic weights over 100. After the long form of the table, the short one appeared that was also reformed and after much thought, in February 1869, Mendeleev came to the "Experience of the system of elements based on their atomic weight and chemical similarity". And afterwards, the most dramatic part of the story began. Dmitry Mendeleev was supposed to report on his invention at the Russian Chemical Society, but on assignment from the Russian Economic Society, he left to inspect cheese factories and instead of Mendeleev, his young assistant did not speak very brightly. The paper was published and for publication in a German journal of practical chemistry, German translation was needed but Mendeleev was not fluent in the language. The translation was made inaccurately, Dmitry Mendeleev did not supervise the work and the term "periodic" disappeared from the translation. Only at the end of 1870, he decided to create a short form of the Table, calling it "The natural system of elements of D.I.Mendeleev". Mendeleev predicted three undiscovered elements, future gallium, scandium and germanium and all three were discovered during his lifetime. And in total, he predicted 19 new elements. Igor Dmitriev also told about the German scientist J.L.Mayer that was engaged in similar work, the advantages and disadvantages of his Table. He compiled the Table, but he did not discover the Periodic Law and disputes about the priority arose.

Mendeleev became involved in the search for the world ether after taking part in the reform of the armament of the Russian army. He was provided with devices and considerable funds to study the behavior of gases in the channel of the gun barrel with the support of the Chairman of the Imperial Russian Technical Society Prince P.A.Kochubey. The research ended without results, Mendeleev had a crisis that lasted for several years. He realized that he had to change his job, the topic of research and his wife. And he started with the latter. The speaker quoted Dmitry Mendeleev 's diaries and his correspondence with his future second wife, told a dramatic story of divorce from the first wife, perjury of two friend professors and giving a bribe of 10 thousand rubles to the priest to hold a wedding ceremony with the second wife.

Igor Dmitriev, having demonstrated mastery of the factual material, presented it not academically, but warmly, with love for Mendeleev. Thus, we learned that Dmitry Mendeleev liked to be photographed. "Right, how good!" - he wrote in his diary about his new portrait. And the representatives of the museum and guide communities of Dubna and JINR staff gathered in the JINR International Conference Centre would have surely learned many more interesting things, if it were not for the time limit of the meeting. At the end of the lecture, Igor Dmitriev presented his book "A trap for genius" to Academician Yu.Ts.Oganessian and from E.P.Shabalin he received a copy of the author's fiction prose with a story about Mendeleev's balloon flight.

Olga TARANTINA,
photo by Igor LAPENKO