How Do You Know Who Created The Vastly Popular Periodic Table Of Elements

Do you know who created the vastly popular Periodic Table of Elements? That’s right! Mr. Dimitri Mendeleev has received a Nobel Prize and a Davy Medal as well as other notable achievements. In this essay I will cover all aspects of Mendeleev’s life including his childhood, adulthood, and his contribution to science.

Dimitri Mendeleev was born in Siberia, in a village called Verkhnie Aremzyani, on February 8, 1834. His father was Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev and his mother was Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva. He is rumored to have at least 14 siblings, but many historians cannot agree on exactly how big his family was. He is said to be the youngest in his family.

His father Ivan was a philosophy teacher who later lost his job because he went blind.

He went to the Heidelberg University where he worked on the capillarity of liquids and the spectroscope. Mendeleev even got to work with his colleague Robert Bunsen who created the Bunsen burner. In 1860, Mendeleev went to his first international chemistry conference in Karlsruhe, Germany. Most of this conference was about standardizing chemistry across the globe. This really sparked Mendeleev’s mind and was a key part in the development of the Periodic Table of Elements. At the conference, he also learned about Avogadro’s Law. Mendeleev only worked in Germany for a year before moving back to St. Petersburg in 1861.

Once he was back in St. Petersburg, he began teaching at the Technical Institute, and became even more passionate about Chemistry. Due to his experience in Germany, he realized that Russia was behind Germany because of its lack of good textbooks. In an effort to solve this problem, Mendeleev wrote a 500-page textbook in just 61 days! He named his book Organic Chemistry. He was only 27 years old at the time. His book won the Domidov Prize and it really put Mendeleev on the

Before Mendeleev’s creation, chemistry was just a patchwork of discoveries and observations. There wasn’t really any organization or system to follow. Mendeleev was certain that he could find a better way to present atomic information, so he set out to just that, and started to write a second volume of his book The Principles of Chemistry in 1869. He wondered what would happen if he were to organize the elements logically. So he made cards with the 65 known elements and their properties. He knew that it had something to do with the atomic weigh of the elements, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He was sure that he was on to something, but he still couldn’t see the pattern. He fell asleep at his desk after hours of moving the cards back and forth. When he woke up, he realized that he saw the cards in a dream, and they were in the correct place. Mendeleev stated “In a dream I saw a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper.” (Mendeleev, Dimitri). It’s amazing that what one dream brought along, is still followed in today’s day and age. Two weeks later, he published the second volume of his textbook named The Relation between the Properties and Atomic Weights of the Elements. When the scientific community got their hands on this newfound information, they were astounded! No one has ever