Not the creator of vodka: 10 facts from the life of Russian scientist Dmitry Mendeleev

In February 1834, in The scientist Dmitry Mendeleev was born in Tobolsk, who successfully worked in many fields of science. One of his most famous discoveries is the periodic law of chemical elements.

Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev-the father of D. I. Mendeleev, XIX century

The seventeenth child in the family

Dmitry Mendeleev was the seventeenth child in the family of Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev, who held the position of director of the Tobolsk gymnasium. At that time, a large family was atypical for the Russian intelligentsia, even in the villages such families were rarely found. However, by the time of the birth of the future great scientist, two boys and five girls remained alive in the Mendeleev family: eight children died in infancy, three of them were not even given a name by their parents.

Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva (nee Kornileva), mother of D. I. Mendeleev

Two-man and gold medalist

At the gymnasium, Dmitry Mendeleev studied poorly, did not like Latin and the Law of God. During the training in The future scientist stayed at the Main Pedagogical Institute of St. Petersburg for the second year. Studying was not easy at first. In the first year of the institute, he managed to get unsatisfactory marks in all subjects except mathematics. And in mathematics, he had only a "satisfactory".

But in the senior courses, things went differently: Mendeleev's average annual score was 4.5 with a single three-according to the Law of God. Mendeleev graduated from the institute in 1855 with a gold medal and was appointed a senior teacher of a gymnasium in Simferopol, but due to his health undermined during his studies and the outbreak of the Crimean War, he transferred to Odessa, where he worked as a teacher at the Richelieu Lyceum.

Scales designed by D. I. Mendeleev for weighing gaseous and solid substances

A recognized master of suitcase cases

Mendeleev liked to bind books, glue frames for portraits, and also make suitcases. In St. Petersburg and in In Moscow, he was known as the best in Russian suitcase makers are masters. "From Mendeleev himself," the merchants said. His products were solid and of high quality. The scientist studied all the known recipes for making glue at that time and came up with his own special glue mixture. Mendeleev kept the method of its preparation a secret.

D. I. Mendeleev. An attempt at a chemical understanding of the world ether. St. Petersburg, 1905

Intelligence scientist

It is a little-known fact, but the famous scientist had to participate in industrial espionage. In 1890, the maritime minister Nikolai Chikhachev turned to Dmitry Mendeleev and asked him to help get the secret of making smokeless gunpowder. Since it was quite expensive to buy such gunpowder, the great chemist was asked to unravel the secret of production.

D. I. Mendeleev, 1886

The" Russian standard " of vodka was not invented by Mendeleev

Dmitry Mendeleev did not invent vodka. The ideal fortress of 40 degrees and vodka itself were invented before 1865, when Mendeleev defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic "Reasoning about the combination of alcohol with water". There is not a word about vodka in his dissertation, it is devoted to the properties of mixtures of alcohol and water. In his work, the scientist established the proportions of the ratio of vodka and water, at which there is a marginal decrease in the volume of mixed liquids. This is a solution with an alcohol concentration of about 46 percent by weight. The ratio has nothing to do with 40 degrees.

Forty-degree vodka in Russia appeared in 1843, when Dmitry Mendeleev was 9 years old. Then the Russian government in the fight against diluted vodka set a minimum threshold — vodka should be at least 40 degrees strong, the error was allowed in 2 degrees.

Photo portrait of D. I. Mendeleev in 1861, court photographer S. L. Levitsky

Russia bought" Mendeleev " gunpowder from the Americans

In 1893, Dmitry Mendeleev established the production of smokeless gunpowder invented by him, but the Russian government, then headed by Pyotr Stolypin, did not have time to patent it, and the invention was used overseas. In 1914, Russia bought several thousand tons of this gunpowder from the United States for gold. The Americans themselves, laughing, did not hide that they were selling "Mendeleev gunpowder"to the Russians.

The inventor of the balloon

On October 19, 1875, in a report at a meeting of the Physical Society at St. Petersburg University, Dmitry Mendeleev put forward the idea of a balloon with a sealed gondola for studying the high-altitude layers of the atmosphere. The first version of the installation implied the possibility of lifting into the upper atmosphere, but later the scientist designed a controlled balloon with engines. However, the scientist did not even have enough money to build one high-altitude balloon. As a result, Mendeleev's proposal was never implemented. The world's first stratostat-the so-called sealed balloons designed to fly into the stratosphere (an altitude of more than 11 kilometers) - flew only in 1931 from the German city of Augsburg.

Pycnometer of D. I. Mendeleev

Mendeleev came up with the idea of using a pipeline to pump oil

Dmitry Mendeleev created a scheme for fractional distillation of oil and formulated the theory of the inorganic origin of oil. He was the first to declare that it is a crime to burn oil in furnaces, since many chemical products can be obtained from it. He also suggested that oil companies should transport oil not on carts and not in wineskins, but in tanks, and that it should be pumped through pipes. The scientist proved on the figures how much more expedient it is to transport oil in bulk, and to build oil refining plants in places where petroleum products are consumed.

Russian Russian Chemical Society founders (members of the chemical section of the 1st Congress of Russian Naturalists and Doctors, who issued a resolution on the establishment-January 4, 1868). Mendeleev is the 10th from the left

Three-time nominee for the Nobel Prize

Dmitry Mendeleev was nominated for the Nobel Prize, awarded since 1901, three times — in 1905, 1906 and 1907. However, it was nominated only by foreigners. Members of the Imperial Academy of Sciences repeatedly rejected his candidacy by secret ballot. Mendeleev was a member of many foreign academies and scientific societies, but he never became a member of his native Russian Academy.

The chemical element No. 101 bears the name of Mendeleev

The chemical element mendelevium is named after Mendeleev. Artificially obtained in 1955, the element was named after a chemist who first began using the periodic table of elements to predict the chemical properties of elements that had not yet been discovered.

In fact, Mendeleev is not the first who created the periodic table of elements, and not the first who suggested the periodicity of the chemical properties of the elements. Mendeleev's achievement was to determine the periodicity and on its basis to compile a table of elements. The scientist left empty cells for the elements that have not yet been discovered. As a result, using the periodicity of the table, it was possible to determine all the physical and chemical properties of the missing elements.

Ilya Repin. Portrait of D. I. Mendeleev in the mantle of a Doctor of Law at the University of Edinburgh. one thousand eight hundred eighty five