Dmitri Mendeleev and the Periodic Table of Elements.
Dmitri Mendeleev (1834 – 1907). On February 2 1907 Russian chemist and inventor Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev passed away. He is probably best known for his version of the periodic table of chemical elements Furthermore, he used it to correct the properties of some already discovered elements and also to predict the properties of eight elements yet to be discovered. Dmitri Mendeleev was born in Tobolsk Siberia and moved to Saint Petersburg where he was able to enroll at the same institution his father attended, the Main Pedalogical Institute. Mendeleev trained to become a teacher while publishing several research papers. Even though it is believed that Mendeleev was due to his temper quite unpopular, he graduated as one of the best students of his class. He was awarded the Master's degree in Chemistry around 1856 . Mendeleev won an award to pursue chemical research in Europe and spent some time at the University of Heidelberg where he worked with Robert Bunsen in 1860 Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff discovered cesium using chemical spectroscopy which they introduced to Mendeleev as well. In the same year, Dmitri Mendeleev attended the first known international chemistry conference at Karlsruhe which was used to discuss standadization methods in chemistry and therefore great use for Mendeleev's future worok on the periodic table. Back in Russia, Mendeleev saw the need to improve Russian language chemistry textbooks and it has been handed down, that the scientist wrote a 500page textbook in just 60 days called 'Organic Chemistry'. The work not only improved the education of chemistry in Russia but also increased Mendeleev's reputation dramatically. He became the Chair of General Chemistry at the University of Saint Petersburg the age of 33. Another major work by Mendeleev in this period, published in 1869 was. The 'Principles of Chemistry' which was translated into English French and German . Even though other scientists including John Newlands Alexandre Béguyer de Chancourtois and Julius Lothar Meyer made important contributions to the Periodic Table the main credit goes to Dmitri Mendeleev According to the Royal Society of Chemistry there were two problems regarding the establishment of a pattern for the elements. Back then, only 60 elements were discovered and as we know today, parts of their information was wrong. At first, the scientist wrote the elements' properties on cards and he realized that when arranging the elements in order of increasing atomic weight certain element types occurred regularly. Mendeleev's ideas were presented to the Russian Physico-chemical Society and published in the main German chemistry periodical of the time, Zeitschrift für Chemie. From the arrangement in the table, Mendeleev noticed that sometimes the atomic weights must be wrong, because the elements appeared at the wrong places. Today, we know that it is the atomic number not relative atomic mass that decides an element's position in the Periodic Table However, in most cases they result in the same order. . At yovisto you may learn more about 'Dmitri Mendeleev & Lothar Meyer -. The Periodic Table'.