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“Often what is important is not the truth itself, but its illumination and the strength of the argument developed in its favor. It is also important that a brilliant scientist shares his thoughts, who told the whole world that he is capable of creating great things, finding the key to the innermost secrets of nature. In this case, Mendeleev’s position perhaps resembles that taken by the great artists Shakespeare or Tolstoy. The truths presented in their works are as old as the world, but those artistic images in which these truths are clothed will remain young forever.”

L. A. Chugaev

“A brilliant chemist, a first-class physicist, a fruitful researcher in the field of hydrodynamics, meteorology, geology, various departments chemical technology and other disciplines related to chemistry and physics, a deep expert in the chemical industry and industry in general, especially Russian, an original thinker in the field of the study of national economy, a statesman who, unfortunately, was not destined to become a statesman, but who saw and understood the tasks and future of Russia better than the representatives of our official government.” This assessment of Mendeleev is given by Lev Aleksandrovich Chugaev.

Dmitry Mendeleev was born on January 27 (February 8), 1834 in Tobolsk, the seventeenth and last child in the family of Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev, who at that time held the position of director of the Tobolsk gymnasium and schools of the Tobolsk district. In the same year, Mendeleev's father went blind and soon lost his job (died in 1847). All care for the family then passed to Mendeleev’s mother, Maria Dmitrievna, née Kornilieva, a woman of outstanding intelligence and energy. She managed to simultaneously manage a small glass factory, which provided (along with a meager pension) a more than modest livelihood, and take care of the children, whom she gave an excellent education for that time. She paid a lot of attention to her youngest son, in whom she was able to discern his extraordinary abilities. However, Mendeleev did not study well at the Tobolsk gymnasium. Not all subjects were to his liking. He willingly studied only mathematics and physics. His aversion to the classical school remained with him throughout his life.

Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva died in 1850. Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev retained a grateful memory of her until the end of his days. This is what he wrote many years later, dedicating his essay “Study of Aqueous Solutions by Specific Gravity” to the memory of his mother: “This study is dedicated to the memory of the mother by her last child. She could grow it only with her labor, running a factory; She raised her by example, corrected her with love, and in order to give to science, she took her out of Siberia, spending her last resources and strength. Dying, she bequeathed: to avoid Latin self-delusion, to insist on work, not words, and to patiently seek divine or scientific truth, because she understood how often dialectics deceives, how much still needs to be learned, and how, with the help of science, without violence, lovingly, but prejudices and errors are firmly eliminated, and the following are achieved: protection of the acquired truth, freedom of further development, common good and internal well-being. D. Mendeleev considers his mother’s covenants sacred.”

Mendeleev found favorable soil for the development of his abilities only at the Main Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg. Here he met outstanding teachers who knew how to instill in the souls of their listeners a deep interest in science. Among them were the best scientific forces of that time, academicians and professors of St. Petersburg University. The very environment of the institute, with all the strictness of the regime of a closed educational institution, thanks to the small number of students, the extremely caring attitude towards them and their close connection with the professors, provided ample opportunity for the development of individual inclinations.

Mendeleev's student research related to analytical chemistry: studying the composition of the minerals orthite and pyroxene. Subsequently, he was not actually involved in chemical analysis, but always considered it as a very important tool for clarifying different results research. Meanwhile, it was the analyzes of orthite and pyroxene that became the impetus for choosing the topic of his diploma work (dissertation): “Isomorphism in connection with other relationships of crystalline form to composition.” It began with these words: “The laws of mineralogy, like other natural sciences, relate to three categories that determine the objects of the visible world - form, content and properties. The laws of forms are subject to crystallography, the laws of properties and content are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry.”

The concept of isomorphism played a significant role here. This phenomenon has been studied by Western European scientists for several decades. In Russia, Mendeleev was essentially the first in this field. The detailed review he compiled of factual data and observations and the conclusions formulated on its basis would have done credit to any scientist specially dealing with the problems of isomorphism. As Mendeleev later recalled, “the preparation of this dissertation involved me in the study of chemical relations most of all. This determined a lot." He would later call the study of isomorphism one of the “precursors” that contributed to the discovery of the Periodic Law.

After completing the course at the institute, Mendeleev worked as a teacher, first in Simferopol, then in Odessa, where he used Pirogov’s advice. In 1856, he returned to St. Petersburg, where he defended his dissertation for a master's degree in chemistry, “On Specific Volumes.” At the age of 23 he became an associate professor at St. Petersburg University, where he taught first theoretical and then organic chemistry.

In 1859, Mendeleev was sent on a two-year business trip abroad. If many of his other compatriots-chemists were sent abroad mainly “to improve education”, without having their own research programs, then Mendeleev, in contrast to them, had a clearly developed program. He went to Heidelberg, where the names of Bunsen, Kirchhoff and Kopp attracted him, and there he worked in a laboratory organized by himself, mainly studying the phenomena of capillarity and surface tension of liquids, and spent his leisure hours in the circle of young Russian scientists: S. P. Botkin, I. M. Sechenov, I. A. Vyshnegradsky, A. P. Borodin and others.

In Heidelberg, Mendeleev made a significant experimental discovery: he established the existence of an “absolute boiling point” (critical temperature), upon reaching which, under certain conditions, a liquid instantly turns into steam. Soon a similar observation was made by the Irish chemist T. Andrews. Mendeleev worked in the Heidelberg laboratory primarily as an experimental physicist, and not a chemist. He failed to solve the task - to establish “the true measure for the adhesion of liquids and find its dependence on the weight of the particles.” More precisely, he did not have time to do this - his business trip expired.

At the end of his stay in Heidelberg, Mendeleev wrote: “The main subject of my studies is physical chemistry. Newton was also convinced that the cause of chemical reactions lies in simple molecular attraction, which determines cohesion and is similar to the phenomena of mechanics. The brilliance of purely chemical discoveries has made modern chemistry a completely special science, separating it from physics and mechanics, but, undoubtedly, the time must come when chemical affinity will be considered as a mechanical phenomenon... I have chosen as my specialty those questions whose solution this time can bring closer "

This handwritten document was preserved in Mendeleev’s archive; in it, he essentially expressed his “cherished thoughts” regarding the directions of knowledge of the deep essence of chemical phenomena.

In 1861, Mendeleev returned to St. Petersburg, where he resumed lecturing on organic chemistry at the university and published works entirely devoted to organic chemistry. One of them, purely theoretical, is called “An Experience in the Theory of the Limits of Organic Compounds.” In it he develops original ideas about their limiting forms in individual homological series. Thus, Mendeleev turns out to be one of the first theorists in the field of organic chemistry in Russia. He published a textbook, remarkable for that time, “Organic Chemistry” - the first Russian textbook in which the idea that unites the entire set of organic compounds is the theory of limits, originally and comprehensively developed. The first edition quickly sold out, and the student was reprinted the following year. For his work, the scientist was awarded the Demidov Prize, the highest scientific award in Russia at that time. After some time, A. M. Butlerov characterizes it this way: “This is the only and excellent original Russian work on organic chemistry, only because it is unknown in Western Europe because a translator has not yet been found for it.”

Nevertheless, organic chemistry did not become any noticeable area of ​​Mendeleev’s activity. In 1863, the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University elected him as a professor in the department of technology, but due to his lack of a master’s degree in technology, he was confirmed in the position only in 1865. Before that, in 1864, Mendeleev was also elected professor of the St. Petersburg University Institute of Technology

In 1865, he defended his thesis “On compounds of alcohol with water” for the degree of Doctor of Chemistry, and in 1867 he received the department of inorganic (general) chemistry at the university, which he held for 23 years. Having started preparing lectures, he discovered that neither in Russia nor abroad there was a course in general chemistry worthy of being recommended to students. And then he decided to write it himself. This fundamental work, called “Fundamentals of Chemistry,” was published in separate issues over several years. The first issue, containing an introduction, a discussion of general issues of chemistry, and a description of the properties of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, was completed relatively quickly - it appeared in the summer of 1868. But while working on the second issue, Mendeleev encountered great difficulties associated with the systematization and consistency of presentation material describing chemical elements. At first, Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev wanted to group all the elements he described by valence, but then he chose a different method and combined them into separate groups, based on the similarity of properties and atomic weight. Reflection on this question brought Mendeleev closely to the main discovery of his life, which was called Mendeleev's Periodic Table.

The fact that some chemical elements exhibit obvious similarities was no secret to chemists of those years. The similarities between lithium, sodium and potassium, between chlorine, bromine and iodine, or between calcium, strontium and barium were striking. In 1857, the Swedish scientist Lensen combined several “triads” by chemical similarity: ruthenium - rhodium - palladium; osmium - platinum - iridium; manganese - iron - cobalt. Even attempts have been made to compile tables of the elements. The Mendeleev library contained a book by the German chemist Gmelin, who published such a table in 1843. In 1857, the English chemist Odling proposed his own version. However, none of the proposed systems covered the entire set of known chemical elements. Although the existence of separate groups and separate families could be considered an established fact, the connection between these groups remained unclear.

Mendeleev managed to find it by arranging all the elements in order of increasing atomic mass. Establishing a periodic pattern required an enormous amount of thought from him. Having written the elements with their atomic weights and fundamental properties on separate cards, Mendeleev began to arrange them in various combinations, rearranging and changing places. The matter was complicated by the fact that many elements had not yet been discovered at that time, and the atomic weights of those already known were determined with great inaccuracies. Nevertheless, the desired pattern was soon discovered. Mendeleev himself spoke in this way about his discovery of the Periodic Law: “Having suspected the existence of a relationship between elements back in my student years, I never tired of thinking about this problem from all sides, collecting materials, comparing and contrasting figures. Finally the time came when the problem was ripe, when the solution seemed about to take shape in my head. As has always happened in my life, the premonition of an imminent resolution of the question that was tormenting me led me into an excited state. For several weeks I slept in fits and starts, trying to find that magical principle that would immediately put in order the entire pile of material accumulated over 15 years. And then one fine morning, after spending sleepless night and despairing of finding a solution, without undressing I lay down on the sofa in the office and fell asleep. And in a dream I saw a table quite clearly. I immediately woke up and sketched out the table I saw in my dream on the first piece of paper that came to hand.”

Thus, Mendeleev himself came up with the legend that he dreamed of the periodic table in a dream, for persistent fans of science who do not understand what insight is.

Mendeleev, being a chemist, took as the basis for his system Chemical properties elements, deciding to arrange chemically similar elements below each other, while observing the principle of increasing atomic weights. It didn't work out! Then the scientist simply took and arbitrarily changed the atomic weights of several elements (for example, he assigned uranium an atomic weight of 240 instead of the accepted 60, i.e., quadrupled it!), rearranged cobalt and nickel, tellurium and iodine, put three empty cards, predicting the existence of three unknown elements. Having published the first version of his table in 1869, he discovered the law that “the properties of elements are periodically dependent on their atomic weight.”

This was the most important thing in Mendeleev’s discovery, which made it possible to connect together all the groups of elements that had previously seemed disparate. Mendeleev quite correctly explained the unexpected disruptions in this periodic series by the fact that not all chemical elements are known to science. In his table, he left blank cells, but predicted the atomic weight and chemical properties of the proposed elements. He also corrected a number of inaccurately determined atomic masses of elements, and further research completely confirmed his correctness.

The first, still imperfect draft of the table was reconstructed in the following years. Already in 1869, Mendeleev placed the halogens and alkali metals not in the center of the table, as before, but along its edges (as is done now). In the following years, Mendeleev corrected the atomic weights of eleven elements and changed the location of twenty. As a result, in 1871, the article “Periodic Law for Chemical Elements” appeared, in which the periodic table took on a completely modern form. The article was translated into German and copies of it were sent to many famous European chemists. But, alas, no one appreciated the importance of the discovery made. The attitude towards the Periodic Law changed only in 1875, when F. Lecocde Boisbaudran discovered a new element - gallium, the properties of which strikingly coincided with the predictions of Mendeleev (he called this still unknown element eka-aluminium). Mendeleev's new triumph was the discovery of scandium in 1879, and germanium in 1886, the properties of which also fully corresponded to Mendeleev's descriptions.

Until the end of his life, he continued to develop and improve the doctrine of periodicity. The discoveries of radioactivity and noble gases in the 1890s presented the periodic system with serious difficulties. The problem of placing helium, argon and their analogues in the table was successfully resolved only in 1900: they were placed in an independent zero group. Further discoveries helped link the abundance of radioelements to the structure of the system.

Mendeleev himself considered the main flaw of the Periodic Law and the periodic system to be the lack of a strict physical explanation for them. It was impossible until the model of the atom was developed. However, he firmly believed that “according to the periodic law, the future does not threaten destruction, but only promises superstructures and development” (diary entry dated July 10, 1905), and the 20th century provided many confirmations of this confidence of Mendeleev.

The ideas of the Periodic Law, which were finally formed during the work on the textbook, determined the structure of the “Fundamentals of Chemistry” (the last edition of the course with the Periodic Table attached to it was published in 1871) and gave this work amazing harmony and fundamentality. All the vast factual material accumulated by this time on various branches of chemistry was presented here for the first time in the form of a coherent scientific system. “Fundamentals of Chemistry” went through eight editions and was translated into major European languages.

While working on the publication of “Fundamentals,” Mendeleev was actively engaged in research in the field of inorganic chemistry. In particular, he wanted to find the elements he predicted in natural minerals, and also to clarify the problem of “Rare Earths,” which were extremely similar in properties and did not fit well into the table. However, such research was unlikely to be within the power of one scientist. Mendeleev could not waste his time, and at the end of 1871 he turned to a completely new topic - the study of gases.

Experiments with gases acquired a very specific character - these were purely physical studies. Mendeleev can rightfully be considered one of the largest among the few experimental physicists in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. As in Heidelberg, he was engaged in the design and manufacture of various physical instruments.

Mendeleev studied the compressibility of gases and the thermal coefficient of their expansion in a wide range of pressures. He was not able to fully carry out the planned work, however, what he managed to do became a noticeable contribution to the physics of gases.

First of all, this includes the derivation of the equation of state of an ideal gas containing the universal gas constant. It was the introduction of this quantity that played a crucial role in the development of gas physics and thermodynamics. When describing the properties of real gases, he was also not far from the truth.

The physical “component” of Mendeleev’s creativity clearly manifests itself in the 1870-1880s. Of the almost two hundred works he published during this period, at least two thirds were devoted to studies of the elasticity of gases, various issues of meteorology, in particular temperature measurement upper layers atmosphere, clarifying the patterns of dependence of atmospheric pressure on altitude, for which he developed designs of aircraft that made it possible to observe temperature, pressure and humidity at high altitudes.

Mendeleev's scientific works constitute only a small part of his creative heritage. As one of the biographers rightly noted, “science and industry, agriculture, public education, social and government issues, the world of art - everything attracted his attention, and everywhere he showed his powerful individuality.”

In 1890, Mendeleev left St. Petersburg University in protest against the infringement of university autonomy and devoted all his energies to practical tasks. Back in the 1860s, Dmitry Ivanovich began to deal with the problems of specific industries and entire industries, and studied the conditions for the economic development of individual regions. As the material accumulates, he proceeds to develop his own program for the socio-economic development of the country, which he sets out in numerous publications. The government involves him in the development of practical economic issues, primarily on customs tariffs.

A consistent supporter of protectionism, Mendeleev played an outstanding role in the formation and implementation of Russia's customs and tariff policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With his active participation, in 1890, a draft of a new customs tariff was created, in which a protective system was consistently implemented, and in 1891, a wonderful book, “The Explanatory Tariff,” was published, which provides a commentary on this project and, at the same time, a deeply thought-out overview of Russian industry indicating its needs and future prospects. This major work became a kind of economic encyclopedia of post-reform Russia. Mendeleev himself considered it a priority and dealt with it enthusiastically. “What kind of chemist I am, I am a political economist; “The Fundamentals” [of chemistry], but the “Sensible Tariff” is a different matter,” he said. A feature of Mendeleev’s creative method was complete “immersion” in the topic of interest to him, when for some time the work was carried out continuously, often almost around the clock. As a result, he created scientific works of impressive volume in an amazingly short time.

The naval and military ministries entrusted Mendeleev (1891) with the development of the issue of smokeless gunpowder, and he (after a trip abroad) in 1892 brilliantly completed this task. The “pyrocollodium” he proposed turned out to be an excellent type of smokeless gunpowder, moreover, universal and easily adaptable to any firearm. (Subsequently, Russia purchased “Mendeleev’s” gunpowder from the Americans who acquired the patent).

In 1893, Mendeleev was appointed manager of the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures, which had just been transformed on his instructions, and remained in this post until the end of his life. There Mendeleev organized a number of works on metrology. In 1899 he made a trip to the Ural factories. The result was an extensive and highly informative monograph on the state of Ural industry.

The total volume of Mendeleev's works on economic topics amounts to hundreds of printed sheets, and the scientist himself considered his work one of the three main directions of service to the Motherland, along with work in the field of natural science and teaching. Mendeleev advocated the industrial path of development of Russia: “I have not been and will not be a manufacturer, a breeder, or a trader, but I know that without them, without giving them important and significant significance, it is impossible to think about the sustainable development of the well-being of Russia.”

His works and performances were distinguished by a bright and figurative language, an emotional and interested manner of presenting the material, i.e., by what was characteristic of the unique “Mendeleev style”, “the natural wildness of the Siberian”, which never succumbed to any gloss,” which made an indelible impression on contemporaries.

Mendeleev remained at the forefront of the struggle for the economic development of the country for many years. He had to refute accusations that his activities in promoting the ideas of industrialization were due to personal interest. In a diary entry dated July 10, 1905, the scientist also noted that he saw his task in attracting capital to industry, “without getting dirty with contact with them... Let me be judged here, as and who wants, I have nothing to repent of, for neither I did not serve capital, nor brute force, nor my wealth one iota, but only tried and, as long as I can, I will try to give a fruitful, industrially real business to my country... Science and industry - these are my dreams.”

While caring about the development of domestic industry, Mendeleev could not ignore the problems of environmental protection. Already in 1859, the 25-year-old scientist published an article “On the origin and destruction of smoke” in the first issue of the Moscow magazine “Bulletin of Industry”. The author points out the great harm that untreated exhaust gases cause: “Smoke darkens the day, penetrates into homes, dirty the facades of buildings and public monuments and causes many inconveniences and ill health.” Mendeleev calculates the theoretically required amount of air for complete combustion of fuel, analyzes the composition of various types of fuel, and the combustion process. He especially emphasizes the harmful effects of sulfur and nitrogen contained in coals. This remark of Mendeleev is especially relevant today, when in various industrial installations and in transport, in addition to coal, a lot of diesel fuel and fuel oil, which have a high sulfur content, are burned.

In 1888, Mendeleev developed a project for clearing the Don and Seversky Donets, which was discussed with representatives of the city authorities. In the 1890s, the scientist took part in the publication of the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedic dictionary, where he published a number of articles on the topics of nature conservation and resources. In the article “Wastewater,” he examines in detail the natural treatment of wastewater, using a number of examples to show how it can be purified wastewater industrial enterprises. In the article “Waste or Residues (Technical),” Mendeleev gives many examples of useful recycling of waste, especially industrial waste. “Recycling of waste,” he writes, “generally speaking, is the transformation of useless goods into goods of valuable properties, and this constitutes one of the most important achievements of modern technology.”

The breadth of Mendeleev’s work on the conservation of natural resources is characterized by his research in the field of forestry during a trip to the Urals in 1899. Mendeleev carefully studied the growth of various varieties of trees (pine, spruce, fir, birch, larch, etc.) on a huge area of ​​the Ural region and Tobolsk province. The scientist insisted that “the annual consumption should be equal to the annual increase, because then the descendants will have as much left as we received.”

The emergence of a powerful figure of a scientist, encyclopedist and thinker was a response to the needs of developing Russia. The creative genius of Mendeleev was in demand by time. Reflecting on the results of his many years of scientific activity and accepting the challenges of the time, Mendeleev increasingly turned to socio-economic issues, explored the patterns of the historical process, and clarified the essence and features of his contemporary era. It is noteworthy that this direction of thought is one of the characteristic intellectual traditions of Russian science.

In the 19th century, as never before, many scientific discoveries were made and technical inventions were created. It seemed that there is nothing inexplicable or beyond the reach of science. One of the brightest representatives of that time was the scientist and inventor Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev. A short biography and his discoveries are described in this article.

How D.I. Mendeleev spent his childhood.

The future scientist was born last seventeenth child in the family January 27 according to the Julian calendar 1834 in Tobolsk.

Dmitry's mother, Maria Dmitrievna Kornilieva, owned a small glass factory.

And his father was the director of schools in the Tobolsk district, Ivan Mendeleev.

Dmitry Ivanovich spent his childhood surrounded by the Russian intelligentsia.

His family often visited Maria Dmitrievna’s brother, who was the manager of the Trubetskoy princes.

Writers, artists, and scientists often visited him.

The future chemist also received many of his first life experiences at his mother’s factory.

Mendeleev Dmitry Ivanovich short biography

In 1850, at the age of 16, Dmitry began his studies at the Main Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg. A month and a half later, his mother died, and the young man was left without relatives and friends, as well as without property. He studied with great interest. Chemistry and mineralogy were his favorite subjects. Dmitry was especially fascinated by the enormous variety of chemical transformations and compounds, which are based on only a few dozen elements. In the last year, for his final dissertation “Isomorphism” on the chemical processes accompanying the formation of crystals, Dmitry Ivanovich was awarded the Mendeleev gold medal. The photo is presented below:

In the fall of 1856, the future discoverer of the Periodic Law became a professor at the Institute of Technology and a private assistant professor at the university in St. Petersburg. From 1859 to 1861 he worked in Heidelberg (Germany). Having his own laboratory, he conducted scientific research in an as yet undefined direction. However, after the International Congress of Chemists in 1860 in Karlsruhe, the scientist came to the conclusion that should work in the direction of atomic masses(at that time the term "atomic weight" was used).

In 1862, the inventor, at the persuasion of his sister married Feozva Nikitichnaya Lesheva. Mendeleev never got along with his first wife. The children, however, enjoyed their father's special tenderness. Soon he bought the Boblovo estate, which reminded him of his native Tobolsk. The meager lands of those places were well suited for his agricultural experiments. He began analyzing fertilizers and conditions affecting the harvest, and taught peasants how to effectively farm. As a result, the amount of harvest, given the scarcity of land, was surprisingly large.

The results of Mendeleev's doctoral dissertation on mixing water and ethyl alcohol, which the scientist defended in 1865, form the basis of alcoholometry in Holland, Austria, Germany and Russia.

Further scientific research led to the creation of the Periodic Table in early 1869. Most of the world's academies elected the creator of the table of elements as a member, and the most famous universities as an honorary doctor.

The marriage of the great inventor was not happy, and in the spring of 1877 he started an affair with a 17-year-old artist. After 3 years, the scientist finally separated from his family, and in April 1882 they got married. Since then, artists - Repin, Yaroshenko, Kuindzhi - often began to visit the house.

Since 1892 the great chemist became chief custodian of weights and measures depot. And in a matter of years he turned this institution into a large scientific center. It was not for nothing that from a young age he loved precise measurements and sensitive instruments.

On January 20, 1907, Mendeleev died of pneumonia in St. Petersburg. A short biography of the great scientist testifies to his true devotion to his homeland and science. Dmitry Ivanovich was buried at the Volkovsky cemetery.

Mendeleev Dmitry Ivanovich interesting facts from life

On August 7, 1897, the already middle-aged chemist decided to break away from the Earth in a hot air balloon with an experienced aeronaut to observe the solareclipses. Just before the ascent, it started to rain, and it was obvious that the wet balloon would not be able to lift two people. The aeronaut jumped out of the basket, and the ball suddenly began to rise. The scientist, who took off in a hot air balloon for the first time in his life, had no choice but to carry out his plan alone. Once above the dense clouds, he observed the total eclipse and then landed the balloon.

On the eve of the burial The brain of the great chemist was removed for research in the hope of finding out the reason for his genius, as well as genius in general. A year later, Professor Bekhterev reported that the late scientist’s brain was particularly developed and had an abundance of convolutions. Perhaps only Mendeleev himself did not consider himself a genius. Interesting facts from the life of the great chemist, however, are not limited to these two.

What Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev invented for the needs of the army

In 1890-1892, Dmitry Ivanovich, together with I. M. Cheltsov, worked on the creation of smokeless gunpowder. In December 1890, he obtained soluble nitrocellulose, a product of the interaction of cellulose with nitric acid. And in January 1891 - a special type of it, called “pyrocollodia” by the creator. The scientist developed his own recipe for smokeless gunpowder based on pyrocollodium, which turned out to be better than foreign ones.

Frequent question asked in crosswords and quizzes, sounds something like this: “Everyone knows Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev. What did this scientist invent for the needs of the army (5 letters)? Of course, the answer is simple, but not very attentive people answer: “smokeless pyrocolloid gunpowder,” when in reality the gunpowder is pyrocolloid gunpowder.

Mendeleev Dmitry Ivanovich achievements in chemistry and science

During his adult life, D.I. Mendeleev made a significant contribution to a variety of scientific fields. Scientist's discoveries have brought great benefits to the world and especially Russia. His main scientific achievements are listed and briefly explained below:

• Discovery of the Periodic Law - one of the fundamental laws of the universe, integral to all natural science.
• Derivation of the ideal gas equation. This equation expresses the relationship between the volume, pressure and temperature of any gas, if we neglect the size and potential energy of its molecules, as well as the time it takes for their collisions.
• Proposal to introduce a thermodynamic temperature scale.
• Creation of the Doctrine of Solutions, which shows the relationship between the properties and chemical composition of solutions.
• Creation of pyrocollodion smokeless powder.
• Introduction of new methods of oil distillation, ideas for building oil pipelines. As a result, Russia was transformed from an importer into an exporter of petroleum products.
• Creation of an exact theory of scales.

Mendeleev Dmitry Ivanovich: periodic table

Both strong similarities and sharp contrasts were found between the properties of certain chemical elements. Attempts to classify elements have been far from perfect.

The brilliant chemist discovered that if elements with similar properties are arranged in order of increasing atomic mass, then they are also arranged in order of changes in the expression of common properties. If arrange in ascending order of atomic weight all known elements, then in this case the series will be divided into segments, within which a natural change in the characteristics of the elements is observed. Hence the law follows: the characteristics of chemical elements are periodically dependent on the mass of their atom.

For clarity of systematization of elements, it is advisable to present them in the form of a table. Where the lines form periods - segments, which were just mentioned. And the columns make up groups of similar elements, arranged in decreasing or increasing severity of their common properties.

With the help of the Periodic Table, it was possible to predict the existence of yet unknown elements and even determine in detail the properties of some of them. Which is what Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev did. His table remains the most successful to this day classification of chemical elements.

The most important things in life are discussed by such a scientist as Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev (short biography). And his discoveries left a noticeable mark on Russian science. Do you think these achievements are important? Leave your opinion or feedback for everyone on the forum.

Biography of Mendeleev, scientific activities of Mendeleev

Information about Mendeleev's biography, Mendeleev's scientific activities

1. Biography of Mendeleev

2. Member of the Union of Russian People

3. Scientific activities

Periodic table of chemical elements (periodic table)

Specific volumes. Chemistry of silicates and glassy state

Gas research

The doctrine of solutions

Aeronautics

Shipbuilding. Development of the Far North

Metrology

Powder making

About electrolytic dissociation

4. Logical-thematic paradigm of the scientist’s creativity

5. D. I. Mendeleev and the world

6. Recognition

Awards, academies and societies

Doctoral title

Nobel epic

Mendeleev Dmitry Ivanovich is(January 27 (February 8) 1834, Tobolsk - January 20 (February 2) 1907, St. Petersburg) - Russian scientist and public figure. Chemist, physical chemist, physicist, metrologist, economist, technologist, geologist, meteorologist, teacher, aeronaut, instrument maker, encyclopedist. One of the most famous discoveries is the periodic law of chemical elements.

Biography of Mendeleev

Mendeleev Dmitry Ivanovich - brilliant Russian chemist, physicist and naturalist in in a broad sense this word.

Mendeleev's parents are of purely Russian origin. His paternal grandfather was a priest and bore the surname Sokolov; The surname "Mendeleev" was received, according to the customs of that time, in the form of a nickname, by Mendeleev's father in theological school. Mendeleev's mother came from an old but impoverished merchant family.

Mendeleev was born on January 27, 1834 in Tobolsk, the seventeenth and last child in the family of Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev, who at that time held the position of director of the Tobolsk gymnasium and schools of the Tobolsk district. In the same year, Mendeleev's father went blind and soon lost his job (died in 1847).

All care for the family then passed to Mendeleev’s mother, Maria Dmitrievna, née Kornilieva, a woman of outstanding intelligence and energy. She managed to simultaneously run a small glass factory, which provided (along with a meager pension) a more than modest livelihood, and take care of the children, whom she gave an excellent education for that time.

The youngest son especially attracted her attention with his extraordinary abilities; she decided to do everything possible to facilitate the development of his natural talents, placing him first in the Tobolsk gymnasium, then in the Main Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg. She died in 1850; Mendeleev retained a grateful memory of her until the end of his days. This is what he writes in 1887, dedicating his essay “Study of Aqueous Solutions by Specific Gravity” to her memory. “This study is dedicated to the memory of the mother of her last child.

She could grow it only with her labor, running a factory; She raised her by example, corrected her with love, and in order to give to science, she took her out of Siberia, spending her last resources and strength. Dying, she bequeathed: to avoid Latin self-delusion, to insist on work, not words, and to patiently seek divine or scientific truth, because she understood how often dialectics deceives, how much still needs to be learned, and how, with the help of science, without violence, lovingly, but prejudices and errors are firmly eliminated, and the following are achieved: protection of the acquired truth, freedom of further development, common good and internal well-being. D. Mendeleev considers his mother’s covenants sacred.”

Mendeleev did not study well at the gymnasium. He did not like the gymnasium routine, in which “Latin self-delusion” played a prominent role. He willingly studied only mathematics and physics. His aversion to the classical school remained with him throughout his life.

Mendeleev found favorable soil for the development of his abilities only at the Main Pedagogical Institute. Here he met outstanding teachers who knew how to instill in the souls of their listeners a deep interest in science. Among them were the best scientific forces of that time, academicians and professors of St. Petersburg University: M.V. Ostrogradsky (mathematics), E.Kh. Lenz (physics), A.A. Voskresensky (chemistry), M.S. Kutorga (mineralogy), F.F. Brandt (zoology). The very atmosphere of the institute, with all the strictness of the regime of a closed educational institution, thanks to the small number of students, the extremely caring attitude towards them and their close connection with the professors, provided ample opportunity for the development of individual inclinations.

After completing the course at the institute, Mendeleev, due to poor health, took the place of teacher, first in Simferopol, then in Odessa, where he used Pirogov’s advice. His stay in the south improved his health, and in 1856 he returned to St. Petersburg, where he defended his dissertation for a master’s degree in chemistry: “On specific volumes.”

At the age of 23, he became an associate professor at St. Petersburg University, where he first read theoretical, then organic chemistry. In January 1859, Mendeleev was sent on a two-year business trip abroad. He went to Heidelberg, where he was attracted by the names of Bunsen, Kirchhoff and Kopp, and where he worked in his own private laboratory, mainly on the subject of capillarity and surface tension of liquids, and spent his leisure hours in the circle of young Russian scientists: S.P. Botkina, I.M. Sechenova, I.A. Vyshnegradsky, A.P. Borodina and others.

In 1861, Mendeleev returned to St. Petersburg, where he resumed lecturing on organic chemistry at the university and published a textbook, remarkable for that time: “Organic Chemistry,” in which the idea that unites the entire set of organic compounds is the theory of limits, in an original and comprehensive manner. developed.

In 1863, the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University elected him as a professor in the department of technology, but he did not receive approval from the ministry, due to his lack of a master's degree in technology (approval took place, however, in 1865).

In 1864, Mendeleev was elected professor at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology.

In 1865, he defended his thesis “On compounds of alcohol with water” for the degree of Doctor of Chemistry, and in 1867 he received the department of inorganic (general) chemistry at the university, which he held for 23 years.

This period of time coincides with the fullest flowering of Mendeleev’s scientific creativity and pedagogical activity. He discovers the periodic law (1869) and sets it out in a number of memoirs, publishes "Fundamentals of Chemistry" (1869 - 71), devotes many years of work, together with several collaborators, first to the study of the compressibility of gases, then to the study of solutions, mainly in relation to the specific weight

The first of these works was carried out with funds provided to Mendeleev by the Imperial Russian Technical Society and the Artillery Department, with the participation of M.L. Kirpicheva, N.N. Kayander, Bogusky, F.Ya. Kapustin, Gemilyan and E.N. Gutkowski, and covers the time period from 1872 to 1878; it remained unfinished. Its results are presented in the essay “On the Elasticity of Gases” (1875) and in several preliminary reports.

Work on solutions, which is a continuation of Mendeleev’s doctoral dissertation, occupied Mendeleev and his collaborators (V.E. Pavlova, V.E. Tishchenko, I.F. Schroeder, S.P. Vukolov, etc.) in the late 70s and in first half of the 80s; its results are summarized in an extensive work: “Study of solutions by specific gravity” (1887).

In close connection with this work on gases, he deals with questions relating to the resistance of liquids, aeronautics and meteorology, and publishes two valuable monographs on this subject. In 1887, he ascended in a hot air balloon to Klin to observe a total solar eclipse. He devotes a lot of attention to our oil industry; in 1876 he made a trip to America (on behalf of the government) to get acquainted with the organization of the oil business there, and repeatedly visited our Caucasian fields for the same purpose; conducts a number of interesting works on oil research.

In 1888, he studied the economic state of the Donetsk coal region, clarified its enormous importance for Russia and proposed a number of measures for the rational use of “the future power resting on the banks of the Donets.” The results of these works were presented by him in a number of articles and individual monographs.

In 1890, Mendeleev left St. Petersburg University under the following circumstances. The student unrest that arose in the spring of this year led to the development at student meetings of a petition addressed to the Minister of Public Education, which contained exclusively wishes of an academic nature. At the request of the students, Mendeleev agreed to hand over this petition to the minister, having previously taken their word to stop the riots.

The tactless response of the minister (Count Delyanov), who refused to consider the petition, and the renewed unrest after that forced Mendeleev to submit his resignation. The requests of his comrades could not force Mendeleev to change the decision he had once made; On the part of the minister, no steps were taken to make amends to Mendeleev and retain its best decoration for St. Petersburg University. Almost forcibly separated from science, Mendeleev devoted all his energies to practical problems.

With his active participation, in 1890 a draft of a new customs tariff was created, in which a protective system was consistently implemented, and in 1891 a wonderful book was published: “The Explanatory Tariff”, which represents a commentary on this project and at the same time a deeply thought-out review our industry, indicating its needs and future prospects. The Navy and War Ministries entrusted Mendeleev (1891) with the development of the issue of smokeless gunpowder, and he (after a trip abroad) in 1892 brilliantly completed this task.

The “pyrocollodium” he proposed turned out to be an excellent type of smokeless gunpowder, moreover, universal and easily adaptable to any firearm. Mendeleev took an active part in work related to the All-Russian Exhibition (1896), the Chicago (1893) and Paris (1900) world exhibitions.

In 1899 he was sent to the Ural factories; The fruit of this trip was the following year, an extensive and highly informative monograph on the state of Ural industry. In 1893, Mendeleev was appointed manager of the “Main Chamber of Weights and Measures,” which had just been transformed on his instructions, and remained in this post until the end of his life.

In the main chamber, Mendeleev organizes a number of works on metrology related to the renewal of Russian prototypes of weight and measure. Particularly important are the works concerning the laws governing the fluctuations of scales and the development of methods for accurate weighing; This also includes determining the weight of a certain volume of water and changes in the specific gravity of water when the temperature changes from 0 to 30°, preparing experiments to measure the absolute stress of gravity. All these and other works were published in the “Vremennik” of the main chamber, founded by Mendeleev.

His famous article dates back to the same period of Mendeleev’s activity: “An attempt at a chemical understanding of the world ether” (1903), in which he suggests that ether is a special chemical element with a very low atomic weight, belonging to the zero group of the periodic table. Since 1891, Mendeleev has taken an active part in the Brockhaus-Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, as the editor of the chemical-technical and factory department and the author of many articles that adorn this publication.

In 1900 - 02 he edits the Library of Industry, where he owns the issue. "The Doctrine of Industry". Since 1904, Mendeleev’s “Treasured Thoughts” began to be published, which contain, as it were, his profession de foi and at the same time a testament to posterity, the results of what he experienced and changed his mind on various issues relating to the economic, state and social life of Russia. In terms of its content, Mendeleev’s remarkable essay “Toward the Knowledge of Russia,” which presents an analysis of the 1897 census data and went through 4 editions during the author’s lifetime (since 1905), is also adjacent to “Treasured Thoughts.”

According to the calculus of Professor V.E. Tishchenko, the total number of books, brochures, articles and notes published by Mendeleev exceeds 350; of which 2/3 are original works on chemistry, physics and technical issues. - Mendeleev, first of all, is a brilliant scientist, a first-class chemist. His discovery of the periodic law earned him worldwide fame and great fame. In this discovery the main and absolutely exclusive merit belongs to him (the works of his predecessors, Newlands and De Chancournoy, containing, so to speak, a rudiment of the periodic law, were unknown to him; the claim to priority of Lot. Meyer, who is often referred to, is certainly unfounded).

According to the periodic law, all the properties of chemical elements change periodically as their atomic weight increases, so that at certain intervals elements similar or similar in properties appear. Mendeleev was not only the first to precisely formulate this law and present its content in the form of a table, which became classic, but also comprehensively substantiated it, showed its enormous scientific significance, as a guiding classification principle and as a powerful tool for scientific research.

It is especially significant that he himself used the periodic law to correct the atomic weights of certain elements and to predict three new elements, gallium, scandium and germanium, hitherto unknown, with all their properties. All these corrections and predictions came true brilliantly. But Mendeleev’s other scientific works would have been completely sufficient to provide him with an honorable name in science. These are his above-mentioned works on capillarity, which (before Andrews) led to the substantiation of such an important concept of critical temperature (absolute boiling temperature, according to Mendeleev); These are his studies on solutions, in which the hydrate theory, which has now received full recognition in science, is developed and substantiated on a large number of facts, and, what is especially important, methods are established for searching for hydrates in solution (special points on the diagrams: composition - property).

A number of other, smaller, but still important, questions of chemistry - about the limits, about the chemical nature of thionic acids, about hydrates and metal-ammonium compounds, about peroxides and many others - are masterfully treated by him in separate articles published in the Russian Journal Chemical Society" and in other periodicals. The same can be said about Mendeleev’s work in other fields of knowledge. Mendeleev, to a large extent, possessed the ability inherent in a true genius to unite various aspects of scientific and generally spiritual creativity and therefore willingly worked in the border areas between chemistry and physics, between physics and meteorology, from chemistry and physics, moved into the field of hydrodynamics, astronomy, geology, even politics savings. Whatever matter Mendeleev took on, no matter how narrowly specialized it was, he took it broadly and sought to penetrate deeply into the essence of the question posed. Everywhere he knew how to be original, or, as he himself said, “peculiar.”

From the question of rational oil production and utilization, he rose to a purely scientific problem on the origin of oil - on the one hand, to a comprehensive analysis of the economic life of Russia - on the other; From the narrow problems of metrology, from the reconciliation of weights, he went back to the problem of universal gravitation. With such a wide scope of thought and versatile activities of Mendeleev, everything that came from his pen was at the same time deeply thought out and carefully worked out.

This became possible only thanks to his extraordinary ability to work, which allowed him to spend entire nights at work, barely devoting a few hours to rest. An extensive course in organic chemistry, according to Professor G.G. Gustavson, was written by him over the course of two months, almost without leaving his desk. In almost the same way, a report on the state of the Ural industry and many other works of Mendeleev were later compiled. Working in the field of exact sciences, especially chemistry and physics, he attached great importance to numerical data and spent a lot of effort and wit on developing methods both for obtaining these data through experiment and for their mathematical processing.

A lot of valuable instructions on this matter are scattered in the works of Mendeleev, especially in his doctoral dissertation and in the works: “On the Elasticity of Gases” and “Study of Aqueous Solutions.” He spent a huge amount of labor and time on the very process of calculating experimental data, both his own and especially those obtained by other authors. Persons who knew Mendeleev closely testify that every figure he communicated - even for educational purposes, in the "Fundamentals of Chemistry" - was repeatedly and very carefully checked and published only after the author was confident that it should be considered the most reliable. In addition to pure chemistry, pure science in general, Mendeleev was always interested in the field of applied chemistry and the chemical industry. He deeply believed in the creative powers of science in the practical field; he was convinced that the time would come when “the scientific sowing will sprout for the people’s harvest.”

Being a champion of the idea of ​​unity between science and technology, he considered such unity and the broad development of industry closely associated with it to be urgently necessary for our fatherland, and therefore, wherever he could, he preached about it passionately, not only in word, but also in deed, in by example showing what brilliant practical results science in alliance with industry can lead to. Mendeleev's thoughts turned out to be prophetic. Some things have been done in the direction he indicated (especially thanks to the late Count Witte, who valued Mendeleev more than other prominent statesmen and listened to his voice), but much more remains to be done, and there is no doubt that what was unfinished is now (1915) one of the main reasons for the industrial crisis Russia is experiencing and, in particular, the “chemical famine” that is hindering the successful establishment of our national defense.

As a teacher, Mendeleev did not create or leave behind a school, like his famous contemporary A.M. Butlerov; but entire generations of Russian chemists can be considered his students. These are, first of all, his university students, and then an incomparably wider circle of people who studied chemistry according to his “Fundamentals”. Mendeleev's lectures were not distinguished by outward brilliance, but they were deeply fascinating, and the entire university gathered to listen to him. In these lectures, Mendeleev seemed to lead the listener with him, forcing him to follow that difficult and tedious path that from the raw factual material of science leads to true knowledge of nature; he made one feel that generalizations in science are obtained only at the cost of hard work, and the final conclusions appeared all the more clearly before the audience.

His "Principles of Chemistry", written between 1868 and 1870. and compiled, at least in part, from Mendeleev’s university lectures, are far from the type of an ordinary chemistry textbook. This is a monumental work, which contains the entire philosophy of chemical science, organically woven into the framework of factual material, and, in particular, a detailed commentary on the periodic law. Originally written for beginners and with the goal of “attracting as many Russian forces as possible into the study of chemistry,” it contains so many deep and original thoughts, interesting connections, the assessment of which is not always accessible to a beginner, which retains great interest for an established chemist who , re-reading the “Fundamentals”, each time he will find a lot of useful things in them.

There are no such works in Russian, and it is difficult to find them in world chemical literature. - Mendeleev always warmly sympathized with higher women's education and was (from the 60s) a professor at the Vladimir, then Bestuzhev women's courses in St. Petersburg. Being keenly interested in issues of public education, especially higher education, he repeatedly returns to this topic in his writings. But it was not only the organization of the school that interested Mendeleev: he reacted keenly to those social moods and trends that could affect the spirit and direction of the school. A convinced enemy of mysticism, he could not help but respond to the passion for spiritualism that gripped part of Russian society in the 70s of the last century.

He devotes a special essay, published in 1876, to criticism of the so-called “mediumistic phenomena”, outlining in it the results of the work of a special commission organized on his own initiative. - Mendeleev’s unparalleled services to science have received recognition from the entire scientific world. He was a member of almost all academies and an honorary member of many scientific societies (the total number of scientific institutions that considered Mendeleev an honorary member reached 100).

Our Academy of Sciences preferred him, however, in 1880 to F.F. Beilstein, the author of an extensive reference book on organic chemistry - a fact that caused indignation in wide circles of Russian society. A few years later, when Mendeleev was again asked to run for the Academy, he withdrew his candidacy. In 1904, on the day of D.I.’s 70th birthday (birthday), the Academy was one of the first to greet him through its representative. His name enjoyed particular honor in England, where he was awarded the Davy, Faraday and Copiley medals, where he was invited (1888) as a “Faraday” lecturer, an honor that falls to only a few scientists. Mendeleev died on January 20, 1907 from pneumonia. His funeral, at the expense of the state, was a real national mourning. The Department of Chemistry of the Russian Physical-Chemical Society established two prizes in honor of Mendeleev for best works in chemistry. Mendeleev's library, along with the furnishings of his office, was acquired by Petrograd University and is stored in a special room that once formed part of his apartment. It was decided to erect a monument to Mendeleev in Petrograd, for which a significant amount has already been collected. L. Chugaev.

Member of the Union of Russian People

Mendeleev received the basics of labor and economic education in childhood, when his mother managed a small glass factory, in the courtyard of which she set up a private farm, and the children helped her. During his student years, at the request of prof. A.K. Reichel went to the woodworking plant he owned, which was bringing only losses, and proposed improvements in technology that ensured high profitability of production.

Mendeleev’s fundamental decision, which left an imprint on his entire subsequent life and work, dates back to this moment. Having experienced poverty in his childhood and youth and seeing that he could earn decent money through his consultations among entrepreneurs, he decided to acquire his own factory. But, on reflection, he decided that this would tie his hands in his selfless search for truth. His hands must be free to show the way to others. And since that time he has not accepted any compensation for his consultations.

Mendeleev could not come to terms with the fact that “the Russian peasant, who stopped working for the landowner, became a slave of Western Europe and is in serfdom from it, providing it with bread-and-butter living conditions... Serfdom, that is, in essence, the economic dependence of millions of the Russian people on Russian landowners was destroyed , and instead of it came the economic dependence of the entire Russian people on foreign capitalists... Billions of rubles that went for foreign goods... fed not their own people, but strangers.” And he begins the struggle to free the country from these economic shackles.

Mendeleev performed in the economic and social fields under difficult conditions. Landowners were the main producers of grain for export. And among them there was a widespread opinion (which found, in particular, expression in the book of the famous economist and statistician, chairman of the Tariff Committee L.V. Tengoborsky), that “Russia is an agricultural country and does not need the development of industry” (others added: yes our agricultural people are not capable of this). They believed that Russia, which has vast expanses of arable land, was destined by its very destiny to be the breadwinner of Europe, where the population is dense and land is scarce. Therefore, efforts should be made, first of all, to expand the export of agricultural products; the necessary industrial products can be purchased abroad using the foreign currency received (except for what is necessary to equip the armed forces). The development of industry in Russia is impossible due to the lack of capital and demand for its products.

Particularly unfavorable conditions for the development of domestic industry arose during the period of liberal reforms during the reign of Alexander II. Industry in Russia developed rapidly, but with the increasing participation of foreign capital. Railways were built especially intensively. But this construction began without creating its own industrial base, and therefore rails and rolling stock, as well as equipment for many factories, were purchased abroad. Russia's customs protection was then reduced to a minimum. As a result, Russia's external debt grew rapidly, and the trade balance was negative. Foreign capitalists exported profits abroad in a larger amount than gold flowed into Russia, and the country's balance of payments also ran into deficit.

Due to all these circumstances, the ideas of Mendeleev, who acted as an ardent champion of the industrial development of Russia, moreover, domestic industry and with support from the broadest sections of the people, met with sharp opposition from both the ruling class and the government itself. The circle of his ideological opponents was wide: foreign capitalists, incl. heads of the powerful Nobel, Rothschild and Rockefeller clans; their Russian “agents of influence”; domestic entrepreneurs, guided by selfish interests, lobbied for their projects and did not want to think about the fate of the country and people; landowners interested in preserving Russia's role as a supplier of grain to Europe.

Mendeleev refuted the ideas of opponents of the industrialization of Russia, argued that there is capital in the country, it just needs to be concentrated in decisive areas, that industry itself creates a sales market for itself.

At the same time, Mendeleev invariably linked the development of Russian industry with the fate of the country, the entire national economic complex, necessary for a modern powerful state and consisting of a number of territorial complexes. It is equally important that he emphasized: we must talk not just about the development of industry, but about “whether it will be national or foreign.” At the same time, he understood industry not only in a narrow sense, as the production of goods and services, but also in a broad sense, including supply, sales, trade, transport, and even non-productive, incl. spiritual and intellectual sphere. And only when he spoke about industry in the narrow sense, did he understand industry by it.

The most important principles of Mendeleev's economic theory were already evident in his first major study in the field of economics. Famous oil industrialist V.A. Kokorev, whose oil fields and oil refinery were causing him losses, asked Mendeleev to go to Baku to study the state of oil production and oil refining. Mendeleev carefully examined all Baku oil fields and oil refining installations and, convinced of the primitiveness of the technologies used there, proposed improvements that made it possible to dramatically increase the efficiency of the fields.

However, he did not limit himself to this, but, continuing his research, over the course of several years he outlined an entire program for the comprehensive development of this new sector of the economy for Russia. He assessed the needs of all of Russia (which imported kerosene from America; other petroleum products were not produced before the invention of the diesel engine) for oil.

He took into account all the then known and proposed oil deposits, identified the conditions when it is better to locate oil refineries in places of oil production, and when - in the centers of its consumption, and drew up a scheme for the location of new oil refineries in Central Russia, especially near Moscow and in the largest cities on the Volga (Tsaritsyn, Saratov, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Rybinsk). He also outlined measures for the appropriate development of communication routes - railways, the Volga waterway (with the construction of special oil tankers). Mendeleev was the first to propose building the Baku-Batumi oil pipeline and placing oil refining plants on the Black Sea coast in order to not only rid Russia of the import of American kerosene, but also export oil products to Europe. He considered it barbaric that crude oil, from which so many valuable products can be obtained, is used as fuel: “Oil is not fuel, you can heat it with banknotes.” Mendeleev opposed the tax farming system, since farmers who received fisheries from short term and not interested in investing money in capital structures, were most opposed to deep oil refining. And the farm-outs were cancelled. Later he visited the USA and, having become acquainted with the practice of oil production in Pennsylvania, came to the conclusion that in Russia it could be done no worse, or even better. These works of his gave a powerful impetus to the development of theory and practice, the rational organization of the entire oil business in the country. The cost of a pound of oil has decreased by 5 times, its production has increased many times over.

Mendeleev prophetically foresaw that the future of Russia was connected with oil.

In the same way, Mendeleev took a comprehensive approach to assessing the prospects for the development of the recently discovered coal deposits in the Donetsk basin. At that time, local entrepreneurs each tried alone to extract coal in their tiny mines, often at a loss, because coal mining could be made profitable only with a sharp increase in production, and this could not be achieved without creating a sales market and high-capacity communications routes. ability. The result was a vicious circle: there was no sales market, and coal production remained scanty; Little domestic coal is mined - coal has to be imported from England.

Mendeleev calculated the cost of supplying St. Petersburg and Moscow with Polish (from Silesia) and imported English coal, and determined under what conditions Donetsk coal would be competitive with them. He developed proposals for changing customs tariffs on coal, justified the need to build a special coal railway (the Moscow-Donbass road was built only in the 1930s), build locks and carry out dredging work on the Donets and on the Don, develop ports on the coasts of the Azov and Black Sea seas. Subject to the implementation of the measures planned by him, Russia could not only refuse to import coal, but also export it itself, first to the Mediterranean countries, and then to the Baltic countries, and he considered this task not only as an economic one, but also as a political one, as a question prestige of Russia. In his opinion, the people of the Mediterranean and Baltic countries, seeing that Russia exports high-quality coal, would be convinced that it is able to produce and export other high-quality goods.

Not limiting himself to studying only the Donetsk coal basin, Mendeleev drew the attention of the public and industrial circles to coal deposits in the east, in the Kuznetsk basin and further, right up to Sakhalin (samples of local coal were sent to him from all over the country). He was the first to raise the question of fundamentally new methods of mining and using coal, in particular, the possibility of its underground gasification.

Mendeleev also deeply researched the ways of development of the industry of the Urals, which was then experiencing a serious crisis. The Ural metallurgical plants, created by the labor of serfs and working on charcoal, using horses as the main means of transport, turned out to be unprofitable under the new conditions and curtailed production. Foreign capital, especially English capital, took advantage of these difficulties to strangle their Russian competitor. Foreigners bought Ural factories cheaply. Under these conditions, the measures developed by Mendeleev to expand the fuel base for the metallurgy of the Urals, in particular, due to the hard coals of the east, incl. The Kizelovsky and, in the future, the Kuznetsk and Karaganda basins became the key to the salvation of an entire industrial region, which subsequently played such an important role in the economic development of the country.

It is noteworthy that within each of these territorial complexes, Mendeleev outlined micro-complexes based on cooperation and combination of enterprises in such a way that waste from one production served as raw materials for another. In his opinion, ideally, social production should approach the circulation of substances in nature, which, as we know, does not produce waste. Where oil and coal are extracted and processed, metal is smelted, etc., soda, salt, sulfur, tar and other valuable products must be extracted from the waste. This will not only increase the profitability of production, but will also make it possible to solve the environmental problems that humanity was already facing at that time. Subsequently, this idea of ​​Mendeleev served as the basis for the construction of powerful metallurgical and other plants.

Summarizing the enormous material collected and his studies on individual territorial complexes, Mendeleev created the world's first doctrine of industry. In fact, this was a doctrine of national economy, because he considered agriculture as a branch of industry, and as the most complex, since it deals not with soulless metal or wood, but with living organisms - plants and animals, and therefore the role of the human factor is especially great here. Unlike the authors of many other works on this topic that were available in the West by that time, Mendeleev considers industrial activity not only as purely economic, but also as moral. He proceeded from the fact that in work all human powers are manifested - both physical and spiritual, “those natural, historical and generally outside the will of the Divine conditions and laws...”

Mendeleev was responsible for the first serious works on the economic zoning of Russia. The extent to which Mendeleev overtook the theory of the distribution of productive forces that existed at that time in the West, which was based on abstract diagrams, can be judged by the following example.

At the time when Mendeleev was developing a scheme for the development of the oil business in Russia, in Germany there already existed the theory of national economics of Friedrich List, who advocated protectionism and insisted on state intervention in the economy in order to achieve economic dominance of this country in Europe. But on the problem of the distribution of productive forces, the most famous in the West at that time theoretical construction there was Thünen’s “ideal” closed state. The German economist Johann Heinrich Thunen (1783–1850) published a book in Hamburg (2 editions were published - in 1826 and 1863), which was translated into Russian under the title “The Solitary State in Relation to Social Economy” and published in 1857.

Thünen came up with a fictitious state in the shape of a circle, with a single city in the center, surrounded by farmland. That state has no navigable rivers or canals, and does not participate in international trade. All its land is equally fertile and evenly populated. The city supplies the village with industrial goods in exchange for agricultural products. And for such a state, Thunen derived mathematical dependencies that determine the costs of labor and capital, the amount of rent and wages, prices for various agricultural products, taking into account transport costs and, therefore, rational zoning of the territory for different agricultural crops, etc. To explain the origin of capital from the accumulation of savings, Thunen had to place his “state” in the tropics, where nature supplies food to man for free. Thünen's scheme was one of the first attempts to reconcile the interests of labor and capital based on the recognition of workers' rights to a “normal” wage. Thünen tried to introduce a system of workers' participation in the owner's profits on his estate. There is hardly any need to explain that the practical significance of such a “science” of the distribution of productive forces was zero.

Mendeleev did not operate in abstract circles, but in the concrete territory of Russia, and developed his proposals, combining deep theoretical study of issues with pre-design research and calculations. Mendeleev's patriotism was especially clearly manifested when considering the paths and priorities of Russia's industrial development. At that time, industrialists themselves, and even more so, economists, considered such a development normal when first a light industry, which does not require large capital investments. Light industry products - consumer goods - sell out quickly, therefore, the invested capital quickly pays off. And only when substantial capital has been accumulated thanks to light industry, will it be possible to build metallurgical and machine-building plants, etc., with these funds.

Mendeleev resolutely opposed such a formulation of the question, in which, in his opinion, Russia was doomed in the distant future to the position of a raw material appendage of the West. In his opinion, Russia needed to begin industrialization precisely with the creation of heavy industry, and, moreover, on the basis of the most advanced technology, with the task of “catching up and overtaking”, or rather, “bypassing without catching up.” Mendeleev foresaw that Russia would have to compete not with some European power, but with the United States, in order to become the strongest and richest country in the world within 20 years. To do this, she needed to invest 700 million rubles in industrial development. annually - 2 times more than the level of investment already achieved then. At the same time, the country’s industrial potential cannot be based only on the factories of the Center and a few other centers of industry; a powerful shift of industry is necessary to the East, to Siberia, access to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, to Sakhalin.

Mendeleev was probably the first to realize that, just as in ancient times, the center of economic activity of the then world was the Mediterranean Sea, and in the late 19th century. - The Atlantic Ocean, so in the near future industry and trade will receive the greatest development off the coast of the World Ocean and primarily on the Pacific coast.

He considered one of the most important tasks of Russia to be the development of the Northern Sea Route, along which the richest Natural resources countries. And this was not just speculative schemes for him: Mendeleev, already at the age of 67, sought his appointment as the leader of a polar expedition on the icebreaker Ermak (for which he developed a project for converting to oil heating and insulating cabins, and the icebreaker itself is unlikely would have been built if not for the approval of his project by Mendeleev), and one of the route options included passage through the North Pole. This was generally Mendeleev’s principle: if he made any proposals related to danger, he was the first to share it. Thus, having put forward the idea of ​​​​using balloons to study the stratosphere, he went on a flight to observe a solar eclipse.

Mendeleev saw the defects of the then practice of industrialization of the country. Even Peter I set the task of improving the network of communications with the goal, first of all, of facilitating the export of Russian wealth (especially bread) to the West. The same course was followed subsequently, especially under Alexander II. Thus, extensive construction of railways was launched without first creating its own metallurgy; as a result, rails and rolling stock had to be bought for gold in the West. The scientist, having calculated how much Russia lost from this, noted with bitterness that German industry was partly built with our money, and subsequently more than half of Russian factories belonged to foreigners, which, in his opinion, was dangerous both in peacetime and especially in wartime .

The most favorable opportunities for Mendeleev's creativity came during the reign of Alexander III, when the Russian economy began to clear itself of the rubble that had resulted from previous liberal reforms. In particular, a commission was created to develop a new customs tariff, which was supposed to protect Russian industry from unfair competition from the West. Mendeleev's friend I.A. Vyshnegradsky, who became Minister of Finance, asked him to look at the draft customs tariffs for at least one group of chemical goods. But Mendeleev, having delved into the problem, became convinced that the work on the customs tariff was being carried out unsatisfactorily, without a general concept, and most importantly, without linking it with the urgent needs of the development of the domestic economy. From that moment on, he essentially took over the unspoken leadership of all work on developing customs tariffs. A new customs tariff was introduced in 1891.

The crowning achievement of Mendeleev’s economic research was the work “The Intellectual Tariff, or a study on the development of Russian industry in connection with its general customs tariff.” Contemporaries called this work “the bible of Russian protectionism.” Before him, the customs tariff was considered a purely fiscal measure, i.e. as a source of replenishing treasury revenues through customs duties. The reasoning was this: if you set too high a duty on imported goods, then its consumption will decrease and state income will fall, and this will also contribute to smuggling. If the duty is too low, then even with great demand for the product, the treasury will receive little. This means that we need to find the optimal value of the duty at which the income will be the greatest. Mendeleev resolutely opposed such a narrow commercial approach and proposed establishing duties on imported and exported goods, taking into account their impact on the development of Russia's productive forces, promoting the growth of domestic production or counteracting it. If, for example, due to high duties, some imported product does not enter Russia at all, but its domestic production develops, then there will be no customs income at all, but the treasury will receive much more in the form of taxes from Russian manufacturers(this is not counting the much greater benefits not for the treasury, but for society - the earnings of workers and the profits of entrepreneurs). Approved by Tsar Alexander III, these proposals played an important role in protecting the young Russian industry from unfair foreign competition, when foreign capital resorted to selling goods in Russia at dumping prices to conquer the market, and after achieving the goal, inflated prices above world prices. It is no coincidence that Mendeleev himself, understanding the significance of this work, joked: “What a chemist I am, I am a political economist! What is there “Fundamentals of Chemistry”, but “Sensible Tariff” is another matter!

Mendeleev's work on customs tariffs was important not only from an economic but also from a political point of view. He considered it absolutely necessary to establish protectionist duties, since humanity is still very far from becoming a single family, there are different states on the planet, and while this is the case, each country is obliged to protect its national interests. He understood protectionism broadly, not only as the establishment of duties, but also as an entire system of measures to create a favorable environment for the development of domestic production.

Mendeleev did not consider either protectionism or free trade to be a universal policy. In his opinion, different economic policies should be pursued in different countries, depending on natural and historical conditions. It is impossible, for example, to accept the theory of free trade for all countries, i.e. free trade, opening markets for goods of any state. And the majority of educated Russians - Mendeleev’s contemporaries - prayed for this then fashionable theory. This will lead to the fact that powers that have already succeeded on the path of capitalist development (for example, England) will impose their dominance on other states that have enormous natural and other resources, but do not yet have a full range of developed sectors of the economy. Free trade can be allowed only for those goods that are not and cannot be produced in Russia, for example, due to climatic conditions (tropical fruits, etc.). An economic order that allows countries processing raw materials to reap the fruits of the labor of workers in countries that supply raw materials, Mendeleev considered unfair and unacceptable for Russia: this order, in his opinion, “gives the haves all the advantage over the have-nots.”

While advocating protectionist measures to protect Russian industry, which was just getting on its feet, Mendeleev at the same time believed that the principle of competition should operate within the country for domestic production.

But protectionism was opposed not only by foreigners and Russian Westerners who stared them in the face, but also by landowners who feared that with the advent of modern industry a labor market would form and the price of labor would increase, and this would undermine the foundations of agriculture. Protectionist measures were also opposed by high-ranking government officials who, as befits bureaucrats, presented the state of Russia as already brilliant, and by industry, as Mendeleev joked, they meant cutting coupons. To overcome this very dangerous look resistance, Mendeleev did a great deal of work on statistical data and showed that behind the general, gross indicators of the country’s economic development, supposedly brilliant, lies Russia’s deep lag behind developed countries in terms of production per capita and the level of well-being of the people.

For Mendeleev, protectionism was just one of the manifestations of state intervention in the economy, to which classical political economy had a sharply negative attitude. According to its postulates, the state should only play the role of a “night watchman,” establish laws and monitor their implementation, and the rest will be best done by the “invisible hand of the market.” Mendeleev pointed out that in fact, the formation of industry anywhere in the world could not be done without the active participation of the state. And for Russia, which lagged behind in creating its own industry, the role of state regulation of the economy was especially important. And historically, the development of industry in Russia has always been stimulated “from above,” by the government.

Not limiting himself only to scientific activities, Mendeleev uses all opportunities to influence society in the interests of developing domestic industry, speaks at trade and industrial congresses, and writes popular articles. The works “Letters on Factories”, “On the Conditions for the Development of Factory Business in Russia”, etc. attracted more and more new supporters to him.

Mendeleev categorically rejects the very possibility of the existence of some abstract, cosmopolitan, economic science common to all humanity - political economy. He generally presented science not as cosmopolitanly faceless, but as nationally colored. It is universal in the knowledge already acquired, but in the ways of comprehending the truth “inevitably acquires a national character.” Therefore, the Russians “must quickly begin to establish the solid principles of all our education,” so far mainly borrowed from the West. This is especially true for the economy, for the factory business, which was just in its infancy in our country: “A simple understanding of the foreign method of factory activity cannot lead us to the development of the factory business, just as simple imitation of the agricultural methods of the West, which was in fashion among us, did not lead to agricultural success, but only ruined many people.”

According to Mendeleev, there can be no abstract political economy because the national economy (industry and trade) and statehood are in close relationship with other spheres of people's life - religion, art and science. Therefore, it would be more correct to accept the idea of ​​the already mentioned German economist of the 19th century. Friedrich List and rename “political economy” to “national (popular) economy”.

Mendeleev had the works of Marx and Engels in his library, making numerous notes in the margins, but did not accept “scientific socialism”, remaining true to his understanding of “national economy” - popular in two respects at once; both because it meets the conditions of Russia, and because it must first of all express the interests of the “Russian working class.” He even specifically stated that he is Russian and writes for Russians, and his goal is to contribute to the “unprecedented flowering of Russian forces” in order to ensure the independence and prosperity of Russia, because otherwise it would face the fate of peoples who have left the historical arena. He emphasized that he invariably defends not private or even government interests, but precisely the people's interests, and therefore fights against misunderstandings of Russia's development paths.

According to Mendeleev, political economy should be national and begin with the disclosure of the concept of “Russia”, with the identification of the peculiarities of the historical development and character of the Russian people. Russia is located at the junction of Europe and Asia, which is important both from a geopolitical point of view and in the sense that Russians (by which he meant Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians) by their national character are called upon to “smooth out the thousand-year-old discord between Asia and Europe...” Mendeleev associated the Russians’ lack of inclination for methodically measured work and their work in fits and starts with the seasonality of agricultural work, with the incredible exertion of all forces during the “harassment” and rest after it. Living on a land with not very favorable conditions for agriculture, the Russians, having exhausted the soil in one place, easily moved to another. That's why they were able to reach the shores of the Pacific Ocean (and even came to the Kuril Islands before the Japanese who lived nearby). But by the end of the 19th century. Russia has reached its natural borders; it has nowhere else to expand and no need to expand. This means that it is necessary to change the Russian folk character, which is very attractive, but with a tendency to rely on perhaps and perhaps age-old habits. Russia's development has entered exactly the stage when it required the creation of a powerful industry, and it cannot miss this chance.

Mendeleev approached the problems of the national economy historically. Russia became a huge and powerful empire not through the conquest of other nations, like England, but through peaceful expansion. Other peoples (such as the Georgian people) often themselves asked to be accepted into Russia. And let’s say, “the Mongol-Tatar peoples are very happy that they can lead a peaceful life under the power of Russia...”, otherwise they would fall under such alien power that their very existence would be called into question. Russia must continue to pursue a peaceful policy and not strive for conquest, because In our country we already have “enough internal affairs on the occupied area of ​​land.” Mendeleev believed that the Russians did not need territorial acquisitions; this would contradict all historical traditions, the image of Russia as the liberator of Europe from the hegemony of Napoleon, the Balkan countries from the Ottoman yoke. He advocated friendship with China, which he predicted a great future for. Russia and China are two sleeping giants for whom it is time to awaken. Considering Russia’s historical task to be “the development of our Far East, adjacent to the Great Ocean,” he believed that its intended role in Asia was “liberation and enlightenment.”

While refraining from conquests, Russia must remember that it itself may become the subject of aggressive encroachments on the part of other states. Mendeleev was an opponent of wars, but he understood that Russia “is a tasty morsel for the neighbors of the West and East, precisely because it has a lot of land, and it is necessary to protect its integrity with all popular means... We must be a people for a long time, ready every minute for war, even if we ourselves didn’t want it…” Wars, alas, are still inevitable, this is due both to the uneven economic development of different countries (that’s who was the first to talk about this law!), and to the very nature of “fallen” man. And if so, then you need to be prepared to defend the country, which means its economy must be corresponding. The scientist never refused to carry out direct orders from government bodies, incl. and the military department. Thus, having received the task of creating smokeless gunpowder, which was already in service with the French army, he quickly created a smokeless gunpowder that was better than the French one. He also worked to identify the reasons for the frequent bursting of guns at that time, and also with success.

Mendeleev decisively rejects the then widespread subjectivist views on the development of the economy and asserts the existence of objective laws of social life (“the obligatory logic of things and people”), but these laws are not purely economic, but cover all aspects of national life. Recognizing materialism and idealism as two extremes that are of little use for explaining and understanding the world, Mendeleev adheres to realism, “striving to know reality in its entirety without one-sided enthusiasm and to achieve success or progress in an exclusively evolutionary way,” which, in his opinion, corresponds to the natural property of the Russian people - “real people, with real ideas.” In contrast to wingless materialism (which he considered inherent in the Anglo-Saxon race) and idealism cut off from the earth, realism takes into account all three components of man - body, soul and spirit, and true discoveries “are made by the work not of one mind, but of all the forces inherent in man.” …” Invariably emphasizing his loyalty to the autocracy, Mendeleev put special content into these concepts. He, for example, called on the tsar and the government to break the “narrow and self-interested” interests of factory owners who opposed the true rationalization of production, expressed the hope that in the near future reserves of coal and other minerals would be transferred to public, state ownership; in Russia there would be no there will be super-rich people and poor people “and everyone will work.” At the same time, he resolutely opposed Russia’s transition to the path of “bourgeois democracy,” considering it a hypocritical cover for the power of capital. His idea is also important: in Russia the market must necessarily be combined with the active role of the state in the economy. Only the state, complementing the market, can most accurately express the national interest and become an instrument of general welfare.

To create a correct scientific theory, Mendeleev believed, one must rely on facts, but in themselves they do not solve anything, especially since they inevitably include a subjective moment - a certain worldview, “harmony of the scientific building” is needed, especially when it comes to on the creation of a theory of national economics. From these positions, Mendeleev severely criticized the “classics” of Western “immature” political economy: “It’s worth reading them, but while reading, you should already see how much erroneous reasoning there is in them... Only in combining the speculative path with the experimental one can one find practical application and with God’s truth is a consistent solution to problems presented in economic science and in economic life.” Mendeleev compares his contemporary economic theories, especially free trade (the liberal theory of “free trade”), with the theory of phlogiston, which was once in use in chemistry, which was also logical in its own way, but turned out to be erroneous. Logical does not mean true; life has its own logic, which often does not coincide with the conclusions from syllogisms. In the meantime, political economy is “in a state of incompleteness and impossibility of prediction,” and it must be made an exact science that can serve theoretical basis for the reasonable construction of the country's national economy.

Mendeleev also did not agree with the cosmopolitan zealots of the universal good, because, in his opinion, one should not lose sight of “the formation of people into states and only through states - into humanity. It is impossible to merge, destroy differences or mix those who are divided - there will be chaos, a new Babylonian pandemonium..."

Mendeleev saw one of the main shortcomings of political economy in the fact that it is limited to a purely economic, most often monetary assessment of the phenomena of economic life, without going into their moral assessment, and this is wrong: “Money and wealth do not justify bad deeds and insults.” Science should aim “at the development of production, and not at speculation.” In addition, in political economy the time factor, the new role of knowledge, etc. were not sufficiently taken into account. Mendeleev was also not satisfied with the separation of economic teachings from practice. For him, theory and its practical implementation constituted a single whole.

Mendeleev distinguishes between work and labor. The destiny of man, as a creator, is labor, not work; progress lies in replacing that part of the labor that a person produces as work with the work of machines. “Labor is certainly determined by the usefulness of what is done not only for oneself, but also for others... And the same reciprocity of general and personal benefit is expressed in appearance by the economic conditions of exchange or real conditions wages for labor." There is no point in dividing labor into productive and unproductive, since both are needed by society. And the artist, and the priest, and the official, and the teacher “can either simply work, or really work, depending on why and what they do, whether they love the work, whether they give to others what they need.” Mendeleev thought about how to create such a national economy that would ensure not only prosperity, but also the moral health of society: “The future belongs to work, it will be given its due, those who do not work will be outcasts - and the sad, very large mistake of many of the newest teachings lies precisely in the confusion of work with labor, the worker and the worker... Work can be given, forced to work, awarded, labor has been and will be free, because by its nature it is free, conscious, spiritual... Work does not create, it is only a modification of the united forces of nature... Unprecedented, Only labor makes something truly new; it does not exist in nature, it is in the free, spiritual consciousness of people living in society.”

Thus, Mendeleev continues the understanding of the economy, characteristic of Russian social thought, as one of the spheres of a single national life, imbued with a spiritual and moral principle. A person is not an abstract self-sufficient individual, but also not a “cog” of the state machine. He is a free conscious being. He has a duty to his neighbors, to his native people, a cell of which (as a historical organism) he is. Modernity is just a transition between the past and the future. And a person not only strives for personal material well-being (individualists mistakenly consider selfishness to be the primary and only incentive for all human actions), he cares about his neighbors and his offspring.

Mendeleev considered the greatest shortcoming of contemporary social science to be precisely the antediluvian understanding of man, which did not take into account that man, representing the highest form of living beings, “includes in his needs requirements that are inevitable for lower beings. He has purely mineral requirements (for example, space), real plant functions (for example, breathing, food) and purely animal requirements (for example, movement, sexual reproduction); but there are also our own, independent, human functions, determined by reason and love,” and the natural law of love is the law of history, the human mind and the Divine one. Economics is designed to satisfy all human needs - not only the lower ones (which is what political economy is currently exclusively concerned with), but also the highest ones. Here Mendeleev already laid down ideas that in the middle. XX century will result in the theory of human capital.

According to the teachings of Mendeleev, the national economy should be an interconnected complex in which agriculture, industry, transport, science, culture, education, the Church, the armed forces, etc. are proportionally developed and harmoniously combined.

Agriculture, from his point of view, should not specialize in the production of bread, mainly for export, because this leads to depletion of the land and to the weakness of the state. Agriculture is a kind of industry for the production of plants and animals, and its products should be processed locally as much as possible. It is much more profitable to export not grain, but livestock raised on grain, not grapes, but wine, etc.

In order not to share the fate of agricultural “theorists” who make recommendations for others solely based on the books of their predecessors, Mendeleev bought in Klinsky. Moscow province Boblovo estate with 400 des. land, although the “experts” dissuaded him from this venture, predicting inevitable ruin. However, without investing large capital (which he never had), in a short period of time he achieved such an increase in productivity (more than doubling) in crop production and productivity in animal husbandry that his farm became a place of pilgrimage for farmers and an object where students did internships Petrovskaya (Timiryazevskaya) Agricultural Academy.

Having deeply studied the state of dairy farming in the central provinces of Russia, Mendeleev developed recommendations for organizing peasant cheese making and other processing industries, which helped peasants get rid of the oppression of resellers. He also outlined ways to improve the feed supply of livestock in areas with different natural conditions, including grass sowing, irrigation, etc. He also studied the possibilities of expanding grape plantations and cotton production in Russian Central Asia.

Mendeleev took the lead in the practical formulation of the problems of chemicalization of agriculture and the development of the foundations of domestic agronomic science, incl. new methods of soil cultivation, afforestation, and selection work.

Practical activity gave him material to refute the theory of Malthus, who asserted the need to limit the birth rate among the poor on the grounds that supposedly population growth proceeds in geometric progression, and food production only in arithmetic progression. Mendeleev showed that, on the contrary, as industry develops, the production of means of subsistence outpaces population growth. The earth, in his opinion, is able to feed up to 10 billion people. He never tired of repeating: “Industrial enterprises are not enemies, but true allies or brothers of the agricultural industry.” Machines will also be widely used in agriculture, and it will receive them from domestic factories.

Mendeleev clarifies the concept of political economists “earth”, including in it “the entire totality natural conditions, among which the very life of people and their entire industry can develop,” is the light of the sun, ambient heat, air, water, etc. The difference between land and other goods is its limitation. The quantity of any good can be increased through production, and the area of ​​the globe remains as it is. That is why cruel wars are waged for the possession of land. Mendeleev recognizes the normal existence of private and state ownership of land and even allows for the possibility of the state purchasing all the land in the country. Moreover, if a private owner hinders the development of productive forces, the state has the right to alienate his land with due compensation.

In industry, it is also possible for state and private factories to coexist - large, medium and small, with domestic and foreign capital, provided that the latter does not play a leading role in the country. Mendeleev especially emphasized this. Russia will be able to assimilate both foreign people and foreign capital, but it should be remembered that “the capital of the fatherland does not have, and therefore ... they cannot - except for interest - be given any rights in the country.” Contrary to the then widespread populist illusions about the possibility for Russia to remain a purely agricultural country, Mendeleev proves the inevitability of the rapid development of industry and urban growth in it, finding for this not only purely economic, but also spiritual and moral justifications: “Neither Christ, nor Mohammed, nor Confucius , nor the Buddha avoided the cities, although they were temporarily in the deserts, and did not say a word against the cities, although they smashed human vices, which were collected in the cities and therefore more obvious.” At the same time, he advocated overcoming the backwardness of rural residents from urban residents in education and access to cultural benefits, and saw in the future, to a certain extent, a merger of city and village, because Gardens and parks will be planted in cities, and small and medium-sized industries will appear in villages, i.e. urban areas will be interspersed with rural areas.

Mendeleev considered the inevitable stage of Russia's passage through capitalism, but was not a supporter of this system; he always remained a defender of the interests of the working people (as he understood them). And he looked at capitalism as an inevitable evil, and thought a lot about how to reduce it. He also considered himself among those who, “seeing and realizing the evil of capitalism, do not see the possibility of doing without it and accept it not as a goal, but as a necessary historical means.” Not considering it possible to “leap over capitalism and do without it completely, that is, to directly enter that impending period in which capitalism will not have its modern significance,” Mendeleev invariably asserted that “the complete triumph of labor over gold has not yet arrived, but has already close,” and believed that “people... will find means to defeat the modern meaning of capital.”

Mendeleev repeatedly spoke out against monopolies, emphasizing that monopolists strive to get rich by inflating prices and oppose the progress of technology, which leads to a halt in development, the decay of all economic and social life, and defended the interests of small owners, incl. and in the oil refining industry, where the dominance of monopolists was especially noticeable. Therefore, he was only stating a fact when he said that he served Russia, and not capital.

Since the development of industry in Russia at that time was limited by the lack of large capital, Mendeleev specially developed technologies that would make it possible to create small but modern factories and gradually, as profits were received, move on to production on a large scale. The idea of ​​the need for a harmonious combination of large and small enterprises found wide recognition in the West only in the 3rd quarter. XX century

Mendeleev approached projects for the reorganization of social relations with strict standards of science and practicality. In his opinion, there are 3 ways to combat profit-hungry capitalism, “and all of them, more or less, have already been applied in practice... Let’s call these three methods: share capital, state-monopoly enterprises and artel-cooperative enterprises... Ideally, you can imagine factories and factories based on pooled capital received from the very same workers and consumers operating in the same or other factories and factories.”

But most of all, Mendeleev relied on those forms of economic life in Russia that corresponded to its deep historical traditions: “The artel-cooperative method of combating the evil of capitalism... I consider the most promising in the future and very possible for application in many cases in Russia, precisely for the reason that the Russian people, taken as a whole, have historically become accustomed to artels and to a public economy.” In the community, Mendeleev saw a ready-made form for combining industrial and agricultural labor. “For me,” he wrote, “the situation is pictured especially satisfactorily on the condition that the peasant farmers, who are employed primarily in the summer, set up suitable factory types of industry for the winter and have a solid income in their place,” and Zemstvos and the government should assist such progress in every possible way. He saw ample opportunities for this in connection with the spread of electricity, when an electric motor could be installed even in a peasant hut. He returned to the same thought many times, precisely on this path, seeing the possibility of eliminating the opposition between city and countryside, ensuring a relatively uniform distribution of productive forces throughout the country. A factory or plant in every community - “this is the only thing that can make the Russian People rich, hardworking and educated.”

Even those communities that were in decline by that time could, Mendeleev believed, be revived over time, especially with the development of local industry in them, because “it is easier to make all major improvements based on a historically strong communal principle than starting from a developed individualism to the beginning of the social." He proposed developing the artel organization of labor within individual plants and factories.

Mendeleev proposed transferring unprofitable enterprises, “with proper control, to the artel-cooperative economy, and not closing them, as is done in Western Europe, dooming workers to unemployment.” But this must be done “openly and competitively.” He also proposed forms of participation of workers in the profits of the enterprise. He loved enterprising people, connecting with them the main hope for Russia’s breakthrough into the future, and he saw the ideal in an enterprise where the owner would be a participant in all its aspects, knew every worker, and all workers would be interested in the results of the common work.

From the point of view of the people's welfare and economic independence of Russia, Mendeleev also considers the problems of transport development. He proves the need to carry out maritime transport not only in small (within one basin), but also in large cabotage (for example, from the Black Sea to the Baltic) only on domestic ships, in order not to pay freight to foreigners, indicates the most advantageous locations for shipbuilding plants, proposes a scheme for improving the network of railways and waterways, which should serve not only the export of grain, etc.

Almost every major work of his required a huge amount of calculations (without a computer!), collecting data from domestic and foreign literature in many languages. Twenty-five voluminous volumes of collected works, filled with formulas and tables, are the work of one person, who, moreover, did not live such a long life.

With special love and pride, Mendeleev collected materials testifying to the great talents of the Russian people and their suitability for any human endeavor. He was admired by the high quality of Russian calicoes, which aroused the surprise of experts at world exhibitions. Therefore, he believed, if the Russian people were given real freedom of production, “we could flood the whole world with oil, not only supply ourselves with coal in abundance for all types of industry, but also heat many parts of Europe,” etc. But they were not given such freedom, in particular because “our upper classes, like our literature, are alien to understanding the highest significance of industry.”

In order to overcome such obstacles, Mendeleev proposed creating a fundamentally new body of state management of the economy - the Ministry of Industry, which would not be an ordinary part of the bureaucratic state apparatus, but would combine governmental and social principles and therefore would find solutions to ensure that “industrial business is carried out in the common interest of the state, capitalists, workers and consumers... so that there is no place for the arbitrariness of administrative persons... so that the ulcer of hostility between the interests of knowledge, capital and work cannot take root among us... (as it happened in Western Europe)..." The ministry was supposed to consist of: would consist of two parts: the minister and his employees would be appointed by the government, and representatives of the people and the public would be elected locally - in provinces and districts. It was also necessary to create several Russian banks to encourage the development of the most important industries for the country (since the existing banks were headed by non-Russian people and did not lend to real production, but were mainly engaged in currency and other financial speculation, playing with our ruble on foreign exchanges), and to practice the formation of partnerships more widely etc. The scientist called on the government “to realize the need to take the lead in the upcoming historical development... The government needs to throw out a new banner that has never been in its hands before.” But this call of his was not heard.

Mendeleev considered a disastrous policy when Russia constantly catches up with countries from which it lags behind in industrial development. Continuously catching up with others, you can never reach the forefront of global economic development and technology. He recalls the names of Russian scientists, engineers and inventors who made major discoveries of world significance and created perfect examples of technology, and expresses confidence that there will come “a new leap in Russian historical life in which our Polzunovs, Petrovs, Shillings, Yablochkovs, Lodygins will not disappear , but will become the head of Russian and global industrial success.” And Russian children will see the Nizhny Novgorod Fair as a World Exhibition that will show the whole planet the power of the Russian genius. To do this, it is necessary to open the road to the heights of education for Russian people from all classes and estates. And Mendeleev writes popular works on economics (sometimes in the form of letters), develops a project for a fundamentally new educational institution, and draws up cost estimates for its construction and maintenance.

Mendeleev made a prophetic prediction of the path of future development of economic science. He was one of the first to realize that in production not only cost and monetary factors are important, but also natural indicators and ratios (for example, in agriculture it is necessary to maintain an optimal ratio of the areas of arable land, meadows and forest plantations, as well as the number of livestock and the productivity of forage lands), “and therefore only that “political economy” that comes from natural science can hope to cover the analyzed it the subject with due completeness and understand how values ​​are created and why “national wealth” is formed or disappears. With this approach, political economy can no longer be reduced to a set of combinations of 3 letters (like c+v+m - Marx’s value formula), but will have to resort to specific analysis specific situations, which will require economists of a completely different type, who understand the main problems of people's life and are able to solve them correctly.

Outstanding works of Russian economic science are the last two major works of Mendeleev - “Treasured Thoughts” and “Towards the Knowledge of Russia”.

The book “Towards Knowledge of Russia” is a historical, philosophical and socio-economic treatise, written based on the materials of the first systematic all-Russian population census of 1897 – immediately after the report on it was published (in 1905). The work “Treasured Thoughts” could generally be called a “small Russian encyclopedia”, in which convincing factual material about all the most important spheres of national life is combined with deep reflections on the past, present and future of the country.

Mendeleev was characterized by a sober outlook on life in general and on science in particular, ardent and effective patriotism, and a national worldview. And he was convinced that “everything that is old, little by little, indirectly, is being rebuilt in a new, better, Christian way,” that “people must work for themselves and for other people who collect God’s gifts,” that “God established by the sweat of his brow and in labor to find bread for others,” that all modern science is based on Christian concepts, and outside this treasury there can be no success in understanding nature, society and man. In addition, he, unlike many figures who were smart but did not control the situation, adhered to the rule: “in this moment choose what is most important.” Mendeleev ridicules the idea that “the entire history of mankind is in political events and in the struggle of parties and peoples,” and emphasizes that “Christianity has indicated a different attitude to the matter...”

Being an Orthodox Christian, Mendeleev at the same time did not consider it possible to impose his understanding of things on people of other faiths: “There is still no universal religion, and its peace will only come after many new trials... The truth, of course, is one and eternal, but ... is known and acquired by people only in parts, little by little, and not all at once, as a whole, and that the paths for finding parts of the truth are diverse.” It is hardly possible to find the truth only on the path of atheism - in any case, our people have understood the benefit of spreading true enlightenment “since the introduction of Christianity,” and the empirical study of nature only strengthens scientists in their confidence “in the existence of unshakable Divine laws.”

During the period of unrest of 1905–07, Mendeleev was among the first to join the ranks of the Union of the Russian People.

Scientific activity

Periodic table of chemical elements (periodic table)- classification of chemical elements, establishing the dependence of various properties of elements on the charge of the atomic nucleus. The system is a graphic expression of the periodic law established by the Russian chemist D.I. Mendeleev in 1869. Its original version was developed by D.I. Mendeleev in 1869-1871 and established the dependence of the properties of elements on the mass number of atoms (or their atomic mass). In total, several hundred options for depicting the periodic system (analytical curves, tables, geometric figures, etc.) have been proposed. IN modern version The system involves the reduction of elements into a two-dimensional table, in which each column (group) defines the basic physical and chemical properties, and the rows represent periods that are to a certain extent similar to each other.

History of discovery

By the middle of the 19th century, almost 60 chemical elements had been discovered, and attempts to find patterns in this set were made repeatedly. In 1829, Döbereiner published the “law of triads” he had found: the atomic weight of many elements is close to the arithmetic mean of two other elements that are close to the original in chemical properties (strontium, calcium and barium, chlorine, bromine and iodine, etc.). The first attempt to arrange the elements in order of increasing atomic weights was made by Alexandre Emile Chancourtois (1862), who placed the elements along a helix and noted the frequent cyclic repetition of chemical properties vertically. Both of these models have not attracted the attention of the scientific community.

In 1866, the chemist and musician John Alexander Newlands proposed his own version of the periodic table, whose model (“law of octaves”) looked a little like Mendeleev’s, but was compromised by the author’s persistent attempts to find mystical musical harmony in the table. In the same decade, several more attempts to systematize chemical elements appeared; Julius Lothar Meyer (1864) came closest to the final version. D. I. Mendeleev published his first diagram of the periodic table in 1869 in the article “Relationship of properties with the atomic weight of elements” (in the Journal of the Russian Chemical Society); Even earlier (February 1869), he sent a scientific notice of the discovery to the leading chemists of the world.

According to legend, the idea of ​​a system of chemical elements came to Mendeleev in a dream, but it is known that once when asked how he discovered the periodic system, the scientist replied: “I’ve been thinking about it for maybe twenty years, and you think: I was sitting and suddenly … ready".

Having written on cards the basic properties of each element (at that time there were 63 known, of which one - didymium Di - later turned out to be a mixture of two newly discovered elements, praseodymium and neodymium), Mendeleev began to repeatedly rearrange these cards, making rows of them similar in properties of elements, compare rows one with another. The result of the work was the first version of the system (“Experience of a system of elements based on their atomic weight and chemical similarity”), sent in 1869 to scientific institutions in Russia and other countries, in which the elements were arranged in nineteen horizontal rows (rows of similar elements that became prototypes groups of the modern system) and six vertical columns (prototypes of future periods). In 1870, Mendeleev, in “Fundamentals of Chemistry,” published the second version of the system (“Natural System of Elements”), which has a more familiar form to us: horizontal columns of analogue elements turned into eight vertically arranged groups; the six vertical columns of the first version became periods starting with alkali metal and ending with halogen. Each period was divided into two series; elements of different series included in the group formed subgroups.

The essence of Mendeleev's discovery was that with an increase in the atomic mass of chemical elements, their properties do not change monotonically, but periodically. After a certain number of elements with different properties, arranged in increasing atomic weight, the properties begin to repeat. For example, sodium is similar to potassium, fluorine is similar to chlorine, and gold is similar to silver and copper. Of course, the properties are not repeated exactly; changes are added to them. The difference between Mendeleev's work and the work of his predecessors was that Mendeleev had not one basis for classifying elements, but two - atomic mass and chemical similarity. In order for periodicity to be fully observed, Mendeleev took very bold steps: he corrected the atomic masses of some elements, placed several elements in his system contrary to the accepted ideas at that time about their similarity with others (for example, thallium, which was considered an alkali metal, he placed into the third group according to its actual maximum valency), left empty cells in the table where elements that had not yet been opened should have been placed. In 1871, based on these works, Mendeleev formulated the Periodic Law, a form that was somewhat improved over time.

The scientific reliability of the Periodic Law was confirmed very quickly: in 1875-1886, gallium (eka-aluminium), scandium (ekabor) and germanium (eka-silicon) were discovered, for which Mendeleev, using the periodic system, predicted not only the possibility of their existence, but also, with amazing accuracy, a range of physical and chemical properties.

At the beginning of the 20th century, with the discovery of the structure of the atom, it was established that the periodicity of changes in the properties of elements is determined not by atomic weight, but by the charge of the nucleus, equal to the atomic number and the number of electrons, the distribution of which over the electron shells of an element’s atom determines its chemical properties.

Further development The periodic table is associated with filling the empty cells of the table, into which more and more new elements were placed: noble gases, natural and artificially obtained radioactive elements. The seventh period of the periodic table has not yet been completed, the problem lower limit The periodic table remains one of the most important in modern theoretical chemistry.

The connection between the periodic law and the periodic system and the structure of atoms.

So, the main characteristic of an atom is not the atomic mass, but the magnitude of the positive charge of the nucleus. This is a more general accurate characteristic of an atom, and therefore an element. All properties of the Element and its position in the periodic table depend on the magnitude of the positive charge of the atomic nucleus. Thus, the atomic number of a chemical element numerically coincides with the charge of the nucleus of its atom. The periodic table of elements is a graphic representation of the periodic law and reflects the structure of the atoms of the elements.

The theory of atomic structure explains the periodic changes in the properties of elements. An increase in the positive charge of atomic nuclei from 1 to 110 leads to a periodic repetition of the structural elements of the external energy level in atoms. And since the properties of elements mainly depend on the number of electrons at the outer level; then they repeat periodically. This is the physical meaning of the periodic law.

The structure of the periodic system of D. I. Mendeleev.

The periodic system of D.I. Mendeleev is divided into seven periods - horizontal sequences of elements arranged in increasing order of atomic number, and eight groups - sequences of elements with the same type of electronic configuration of atoms and similar chemical properties.

The first three periods are called small, the rest - large. The first period includes two elements, the second and third periods - eight each, the fourth and fifth - eighteen each, the sixth - thirty-two, the seventh (incomplete) - twenty-one elements.

Each period (except the first) begins with an alkali metal and ends with a noble gas.

Elements of periods 2 and 3 are called typical.

Small periods consist of one row, large ones - of two rows: even (upper) and odd (lower). Metals are located in even rows of large periods, and the properties of the elements change slightly from left to right. In odd rows of large periods, the properties of the elements change from left to right, as in the elements of periods 2 and 3.

In the periodic system, for each element its symbol and serial number, the name of the element and its relative atomic mass are indicated. The coordinates of the element's position in the system are the period number and the group number.

Elements with serial numbers 58-71, called lanthanides, and elements numbered 90-103 - actinides - are placed separately at the bottom of the table.

Groups of elements, designated by Roman numerals, are divided into main and secondary subgroups. The main subgroups contain 5 elements (or more). The secondary subgroups include elements of periods starting from the fourth.

The chemical properties of elements are determined by the structure of their atom, or rather the structure of the electron shell of the atoms. Comparison of the structure of electronic shells with the position of elements in the periodic table allows us to establish a number of important patterns:

1. The period number is equal to the total number of energy levels filled with electrons in the atoms of a given element.

2. In small periods and odd series of large periods, as the positive charge of the nuclei increases, the number of electrons in the external energy level increases. This is associated with the weakening of metallic and strengthening of non-metallic properties of elements from left to right.

The group number indicates the number of electrons that can participate in the formation of chemical bonds (valence electrons).

In subgroups, as the positive charge of the nuclei of elemental atoms increases, their metallic properties become stronger and their non-metallic properties weaken.

Specific volumes. Chemistry of silicates and glassy state

This section of the work of D. I. Mendeleev, not expressed by the results of the scale of natural science as a whole, nevertheless, like everything in his research practice, being an integral part and milestone on the way to them, and in some cases - their foundation, is extremely important and to understand the development of these studies. As will become clear from what follows, it is closely connected with the fundamental components of the scientist’s worldview, covering areas from isomorphism and the “fundamentals of chemistry” to the basis of the periodic law, from understanding the nature of solutions to views concerning issues of the structure of substances.

The first works of D.I. Mendeleev in 1854 were chemical analyzes of silicates. These were studies of “orthite from Finland” and “pyroxene from Ruskiala in Finland”, about the third analysis of the mineral clay rock - umber - there is information only in the message of S.S. Kutorga in the Russian Geographical Society. D.I. Mendeleev returned to questions of analytical chemistry of silicates in connection with his master's exams - the written answer concerns the analysis of silicate containing lithium. This short series of works sparked the researcher’s interest in isomorphism: the scientist compares the composition of orthite with the compositions of other similar minerals and comes to the conclusion that such a comparison makes it possible to construct a variable chemical composition isomorphic series.

In May 1856, D.I. Mendeleev, having returned to St. Petersburg from Odessa, prepared a dissertation under the general title “Specific Volumes” - a multifaceted study, a kind of trilogy devoted to topical issues of chemistry of the mid-19th century. The large volume of work (about 20 printed sheets) did not allow it to be published in full. Only the first part was published, entitled, like the entire dissertation, “Specific Volumes”; from the second part, only a fragment was later published in the form of an article “On the connection of some physical properties of bodies with chemical reactions”; the third part was not fully published during the life of D.I. Mendeleev - in an abbreviated form it was presented in 1864 in the fourth issue of the Technical Encyclopedia, dedicated to glass production. Through the interconnection of the issues covered in the work, D. I. Mendeleev consistently approached the formulation and solution of the most significant problems in his scientific work: identifying patterns in the classification of elements, building a system that characterizes compounds through their composition, structure and properties, creating prerequisites for the formation of a mature theory of solutions .

In the first part of this work by D.I. Mendeleev - a detailed critical analysis of the literature devoted to the issue, he expressed an original idea about the connection between molecular weight and volume gaseous bodies. The scientist derived a formula for calculating the molecular weight of a gas, that is, the formulation of the Avogadro-Gerard law was given for the first time. Later, the outstanding Russian physical chemist E.V. Biron would write: “As far as I know, D.I. Mendeleev was the first to believe that we could already talk about Avogadro’s law, since the hypothesis in which the law was first formulated was justified during experimental testing... "

Based on the colossal factual material in the section “Specific volumes and composition of silica compounds,” D. I. Mendeleev comes to a broad generalization. Not adhering, unlike many researchers (G. Kopp, I. Schroeder, etc.), to a mechanistic interpretation of the volumes of compounds as the sum of the volumes of the elements that form them, but paying tribute to the results obtained by these scientists, D. I. Mendeleev is looking for non-formal quantitative patterns in volumes, and tries to establish a connection between quantitative relationships volumes and a set of qualitative characteristics of a substance. Thus, he comes to the conclusion that volume, like a crystalline form, is a criterion for the similarity and difference of elements and the compounds they form - he takes a step towards creating a system of elements, directly indicating that the study of volumes “can be beneficial natural classification mineral and organic bodies."

Of particular interest is the part called “On the composition of silica compounds.” With exceptional depth and thoroughness, D.I. Mendeleev first presented his view of the nature of silicates as compounds similar to alloys of oxide systems. The scientist established a connection between silicates as compounds of the (MeO)x(SiO)x type and “undetermined” compounds of other types, in particular, solutions, which was expressed by the correct interpretation of the glassy state.

It should be remembered that it was with the observation of glass-making processes that D. I. Mendeleev’s path in science began. Perhaps it was this fact that played a decisive role in his choice; in any case, this topic, directly related to the chemistry of silicates, in one form or another naturally comes into contact with many of his other researches.

The study of glass helped D.I. Mendeleev to better understand the nature of silicic acid compounds and to see some important features of the chemical compound in general using this peculiar substance.

D. I. Mendeleev devoted about 30 works to the topics of glass making, the chemistry of silicates and the glassy state.

Gas research

This topic in the works of D.I. Mendeleev is connected, first of all, with the scientist’s search for the physical causes of periodicity. Since the properties of the elements were periodically dependent on atomic weights and mass, the researcher thought it was possible to shed light on this problem by elucidating the causes of gravitational forces and by studying the properties of the medium transmitting them.

The concept of “world ether” had in the 19th century big influence for a possible solution to this problem. It was assumed that the “ether” that fills interplanetary space is a medium that transmits light, heat and gravity. The study of highly rarefied gases seemed to be a possible means of proving the existence of the named substance, when the properties of the “ordinary” substance would no longer be able to hide the properties of the “ether”.

One of D.I. Mendeleev’s hypotheses was that the specific state of air gases at high rarefaction could be “ether” or some kind of gas with a very low weight. D.I. Mendeleev wrote on a print from “Fundamentals of Chemistry”, on the periodic table of 1871: “Ether is the lightest of all, millions of times”; and in a workbook from 1874, the scientist expresses his train of thought even more clearly: “At zero pressure, the air has a certain density, this is ether!” However, among his publications of this time no such definite considerations were expressed.

Despite the hypothetical nature of the initial premises of these studies, the main and most important result in the field of physics, obtained thanks to them by D. I. Mendeleev, was the derivation of the ideal gas equation containing the universal gas constant. Also very important, but somewhat premature, was the introduction of a thermodynamic temperature scale proposed by D.I. Mendeleev.

Scientists also chose the right direction to describe the properties of real gases. The virial expansions he used correspond to the first approximations in the now known equations for real gases.

In the section related to the study of gases and liquids, D.I. Mendeleev did 54 works.

The doctrine of solutions

Throughout its entire scientific life D.I. Mendeleev’s interest in “solution” topics did not weaken. His most significant research in this area dates back to the mid-1860s, and the most important - to the 1880s. However, the scientist’s publications show that in other periods of his scientific work he did not interrupt research that contributed to the creation of the basis of his doctrine of solutions. The concept of D. I. Mendeleev evolved from very contradictory and imperfect initial ideas about the nature of this phenomenon in inextricable connection with the development of his ideas in other directions, primarily with the doctrine of chemical compounds.

D.I. Mendeleev showed that a correct understanding of solutions is impossible without taking into account their chemistry, their relationship to certain compounds (the absence of a boundary between them and solutions) and the complex chemical equilibrium in solutions - its main significance lies in the development of these three inextricably linked aspects. However, D.I. Mendeleev himself never called his scientific positions in the field of solutions a theory - not he himself, but his opponents and followers so called what he called “understanding” and “representation”, and the works of this direction - “an attempt to illuminate a hypothetical view of the entire body of data on solutions,” - “...the theory of solutions is still far away”; The scientist saw the main obstacle in its formation “from the theory of the liquid state of matter.”

It would be useful to note that, developing this direction, D.I. Mendeleev, having initially a priori put forward the idea of ​​the temperature at which the height of the meniscus would be zero, conducted a series of experiments in May 1860. At a certain temperature, which the experimenter called the “absolute boiling point,” liquid silicon chloride (SiCl4) heated in a paraffin bath in a sealed volume “disappears,” turning into steam. In an article dedicated to the study, D.I. Mendeleev reports that at the absolute boiling point, the complete transition of liquid into vapor is accompanied by a decrease in surface tension and heat of evaporation to zero. This work is the scientist’s first major achievement.

It is also important that the theory of electrolyte solutions acquired a satisfactory direction only by adopting the ideas of D.I. Mendeleev, when the hypothesis about the existence of ions in electrolyte solutions was synthesized with Mendeleev’s theory of solutions.

D. I. Mendeleev devoted 44 works to solutions and hydrates.

Aeronautics

While dealing with issues of aeronautics, D. I. Mendeleev, firstly, continued his research in the field of gases and meteorology, and secondly, he developed the themes of his works, which came into contact with the topics of environmental resistance and shipbuilding.

In 1875, he developed a design for a stratospheric balloon with a volume of about 3600 m³ with a hermetic gondola, implying the possibility of ascent to the upper layers of the atmosphere (the first such flight into the stratosphere was carried out by O. Picard only in 1924). D.I. Mendeleev also designed a controlled balloon with engines. In 1878, the scientist, while in France, ascended in the tethered balloon of A. Giffard (in French - Henri Giffard).

In the summer of 1887, D.I. Mendeleev carried out his famous flight. This became possible thanks to the assistance of the Russian Technical Society in matters of equipment. An important role in the preparation of this event was played by V. I. Sreznevsky and, to a special extent, the inventor and aeronaut S. K. Dzhevetsky.

D.I. Mendeleev, talking about this flight, explains why the RTO turned to him with such an initiative: “The technical society, inviting me to make observations from a balloon during a total solar eclipse, wanted, of course, to serve knowledge and saw that this corresponds to the concepts and role of balloons that I previously developed.”

The circumstances of the preparation for the flight once again speak of D.I. Mendeleev as a brilliant experimenter (here we can recall what he believed: “A professor who only teaches a course, but himself does not work in science and does not move forward, is not only useless, but downright harmful. It will instill in beginners the deadening spirit of classicism and scholasticism, and will kill their living aspirations." D.I. Mendeleev was very fascinated by the opportunity to observe the solar corona from a balloon for the first time during a total eclipse. He proposed using hydrogen rather than illuminating gas to fill the balloon, which allowed it to rise to a greater height, which expanded the possibilities of observation. And here again the collaboration with D. A. Lachinov had an impact, around the same time he developed an electrolytic method for producing hydrogen, the wide possibilities of using which D. I. Mendeleev points out in “Fundamentals of Chemistry”.

The natural scientist assumed that studying the solar corona should provide the key to understanding issues related to the origin of the worlds. From cosmogonic hypotheses, his attention was attracted by the idea that appeared at that time about the origin of bodies from cosmic dust: “Then the sun with all its power itself turns out to be dependent on invisibly small bodies rushing in space, and all the power of the solar system is drawn from this infinite source and depends only from organization, from the addition of these smallest units into a complex individual system. Then the “crown”, perhaps, is a condensed mass of these small cosmic bodies that form the sun and support its power.” In comparison with another hypothesis - about the origin of the bodies of the solar system from the substance of the sun - he expresses the following considerations: “No matter how opposite these concepts may seem at first glance, they will somehow fit in, be reconciled - this is the property of science, which contains conclusions of thought, tested and verified. We just need to not be content with what has already been established and recognized, we must not become petrified in it, we must study further and deeper, more accurately and in more detail, all phenomena that can help clarify these fundamental questions. “Corona” will, of course, greatly help this study.”

This flight attracted the attention of the general public. The War Ministry provided a “Russian” balloon with a volume of 700 m³. I. E. Repin arrives in Boblovo on March 6, and after D. I. Mendeleev and K. D. Kraevich goes to Klin. These days he made sketches.

On August 7, at the start site - a wasteland in the north-west of the city, near Yamskaya Sloboda, despite the early hour, huge crowds of spectators gather. Aeronaut pilot A.M. Kovanko was supposed to fly with D.I. Mendeleev, but due to the rain the day before, the humidity increased, the balloon got wet - he was not able to lift two people. At the insistence of D.I. Mendeleev, his companion left the basket, and the scientist went on a flight alone.

The balloon could not rise as high as the conditions of the proposed experiments required - the sun was partially obscured by clouds. In the researcher's diary, the first entry occurs at 6:55 a.m., 20 minutes after takeoff. The scientist notes the aneroid readings - 525 mm and the air temperature - 1.2°: “It smells like gas. Clouds on top. Clear all around (that is, at the level of the balloon). The cloud hid the sun. Already three miles. I’ll wait for it to lower itself.” At 7:10-12 m: height 3.5 versts, pressure 510-508 mm according to the aneroid. The balloon covered a distance of about 100 km, rising to a maximum height of 3.8 km; Having flown over Taldom at 8:45 a.m., it began to descend at approximately 9:00 a.m. A successful landing took place between Kalyazin and Pereslavl-Zalessky, near the village of Spas-Ugol (the estate of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin). Already on the ground, at 9:20 a.m., D.I. Mendeleev entered into his notebook the aneroid readings - 750 mm, air temperature - 16.2°. During the flight, the scientist eliminated a malfunction in the control of the main valve of the balloon, which showed good knowledge of the practical side of aeronautics.

It was suggested that the successful flight was a coincidence of happy random circumstances - the aeronaut could not agree with this - repeating the famous words of A.V. Suvorov “happiness, God have mercy, happiness,” he adds: “Yes, we need something besides it. It seems to me that the most important thing, besides the launching tools - the valve, hydron, ballast and anchor, is a calm and conscious attitude to the matter. Just as beauty responds, if not always, then most often to a high degree of expediency, so luck responds to a calm and completely reasonable attitude towards the goal and means.”

For this flight, the International Committee for Aeronautics in Paris awarded D. I. Mendeleev a medal from the French Academy of Aerostatic Meteorology.

The scientist evaluates this experience as follows: “If my flight from Klin, which added nothing to the knowledge of the “crown,” would have served to arouse interest in meteorological observations from balloons inside Russia, if, in addition, it had increased the general confidence in the fact that even a beginner can fly in balloons comfortably, then I would not have flown through the air in vain on August 7, 1887.”

D. I. Mendeleev showed great interest in heavier-than-air aircraft; he was interested in one of the first aircraft with propellers, invented by A. F. Mozhaisky. In the fundamental monograph by D.I. Mendeleev, dedicated to issues of environmental resistance, there is a section on aeronautics; In general, scientists have written 23 articles on this topic, combining in his work the indicated direction of research with the development of studies in the field of meteorology.

Shipbuilding. Development of the Far North

Representing the development of research on gases and liquids, D. I. Mendeleev’s works on environmental resistance and aeronautics are continued in works devoted to shipbuilding and the development of Arctic navigation.

This part of the scientific creativity of D. I. Mendeleev is determined to the greatest extent by his collaboration with Admiral S. O. Makarov - the consideration of scientific information obtained by the latter in oceanological expeditions, their joint work related to the creation of an experimental pool, the idea of ​​which belonged to Dmitry Ivanovich, who hosted active participation in this matter at all stages of its implementation - from design, technical and organizational measures - to construction, and directly related to testing of ship models, after the pool was finally built in 1894; - D.I. Mendeleev enthusiastically supported the efforts of S.O. Makarov aimed at creating a large Arctic icebreaker.

When in the late 1870s D.I. Mendeleev was studying the resistance of the environment, he expressed the idea of ​​​​building an experimental pool for testing ships. But only in 1893, at the request of the head of the Maritime Ministry N.M. Chikhachev, the scientist drew up a note “On the pool for testing ship models” and “Draft regulations on the pool”, where he interpreted the prospect of creating a pool as part of a scientific and technical program, implying not only a solution shipbuilding tasks of a military-technical and commercial profile, but also providing the opportunity to carry out scientific research.

While studying solutions, D. I. Mendeleev in the late 1880s - early 1890s showed great interest in the results of studies of the density of sea water, which were obtained by S. O. Makarov during his circumnavigation of the world on the corvette "Vityaz" in 1887-1889 years. These valuable data were extremely highly appreciated by D.I. Mendeleev, who included them in the summary table of water density values ​​at different temperatures, which he cites in his article “Change in the density of water when heated.”

Continuing the interaction with S. O. Makarov, which began during the development of gunpowder for naval artillery, D. I. Mendeleev became involved in organizing an icebreaking expedition to the Arctic Ocean.

The idea of ​​this expedition put forward by S. O. Makarov found a response from D. I. Mendeleev, who saw in such an undertaking a real way to solve many of the most important economic problems: the connection of the Bering Strait with other Russian seas would mark the beginning of the development of the Northern Sea Route, which would make areas of Siberia accessible and the Far North.

The initiatives were supported by S. Yu. Witte and already in the fall of 1897 the government decided to allocate funds for the construction of an icebreaker. D.I. Mendeleev was included in the commission that dealt with issues related to the construction of the icebreaker, of which, of several projects, the one proposed by the English company was preferred. The world's first Arctic icebreaker, built at the Armstrong Whitworth shipyard, was given the name of the legendary conqueror of Siberia - Ermak, and on October 29, 1898 it was launched on the Tyne River in England.

In 1898, D. I. Mendeleev and S. O. Makarov turned to S. Yu. Witte with a memorandum “On the study of the Arctic Ocean during the trial voyage of the icebreaker Ermak,” outlining the program of the expedition planned for the summer of 1899 , in the implementation of astronomical, magnetic, meteorological, hydrological, chemical and biological research.

The model of the icebreaker under construction in the experimental shipbuilding basin of the Maritime Ministry was subjected to tests, which included, in addition to determining the speed and power, a hydrodynamic evaluation of the propellers and a study of stability, resistance to roll loads, to weaken the effects of which a valuable technical improvement was introduced, proposed by D. I. Mendeleev, and for the first time used in the new ship.

In 1901-1902, D.I. Mendeleev created a project for an Arctic expeditionary icebreaker. The scientist developed a high-latitude “industrial” sea route, which implied the passage of ships near the North Pole.

36 works were devoted to the topic of the development of the Far North by D. I. Mendeleev.

Metrology

Mendeleev was the forerunner of modern metrology, in particular chemical metrology. He is the author of a number of works on metrology. He created an accurate theory of scales, developed the best designs of the rocker arm and arrester, and proposed the most accurate weighing techniques.

Powder making

Contrary to the existing contradictory descriptions of D.I. Mendeleev’s research on smokeless gunpowder, according to documentary information, they developed chronologically as follows.

On May 20, 1890, the head of the Naval Ministry, Vice Admiral N. M. Chikhachev, offered to “serve the scientific formulation of the Russian gunpowder business,” to which D. I. Mendeleev, who had recently left the university, responded with a letter in which, expressing agreement, he pointed out the need to include prominent experts in the field of explosives in the work and overseas business trips - professor of mine officer classes I. M. Cheltsov, and manager of the pyroxylin production plant L. G. Fedotov, and the organization of a laboratory for the study of explosives; On June 9, he visited N. M. Chikhachev for consultations on the upcoming business trip.

On the evening of June 7, the scientists departed from Kronstadt by boat to London; over the course of a month, D. I. Mendeleev met with many English scientists with whom he was well acquainted and with whom he enjoyed great authority: with F. Abel (chairman of the Committee on Explosives, who discovered cordite), J. Dewar (member of this committee, co-author of cordite), W. Ramsay, W. Anderson, A. Tillo and L. Mond, R. Young, J. Stokes and E. Frankland. He visited the laboratory of W. Ramsay and the Nordenfeld-Maxim rapid-fire weapon and gunpowder plant, where he himself tested gunpowder, and the Woolwich Arsenal, where he observed the combustion of various explosives. He made these visits sometimes alone, and sometimes with companions (after visiting the test site, D.I. Mendeleev notes in his notebook: “Smokeless gunpowder: pyroxylin + nitroglycerin + castor oil; they pull, cut flakes and wire posts. They gave samples...”) ]

On June 27, D. I. Mendeleev sent a message to N. M. Chikhachev about the production of explosives, and on the same day at 11 pm he arrived in Paris. French pyroxylin gunpowder was carefully classified (the technology was published only in the 1930s). In Paris, he also met with familiar scientists: L. Pasteur, P. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, A. Moissan, A. Le Chatelier, M. Berthelot (one of the leaders of gunpowder production), and with explosives specialists A. Gautier and E. Sarro (Director of the Central Powder Laboratory of France) and others. July 6 - visited the Louvre, after which he turned to the French Minister of War S. L. Freysinier for permission to visit explosives factories - two days later E. Sarro gave D. I. Mendeleev consent to visit his laboratory, where he was present during the testing of gunpowder. On July 12, Dmitry Ivanovich received a sample (2 g) of gunpowder “for personal use” from Arnoux and E. Sarro. This turned out to be enough to establish its composition and properties - this gunpowder was inapplicable for large-caliber artillery.

On July 17 we returned to St. Petersburg. On July 19, I wrote a report for the Maritime Ministry about the business trip, in which I emphasized the need for independent research - the creation of a laboratory. D.I. Mendeleev carefully thought out its design, which implied the ability to conduct research on a wide class of explosives, vapors and liquefied gases. The laboratory was opened only in the summer of 1891. Without waiting, D.I. Mendeleev began experiments in the university laboratory. He also involved in this work N.A. Menshutkin, N.P. Fedorov, L.N. Shishkov, A.R. Shulyachenko and others, who knew the gunpowder business well and were known for their work in the field of organic chemistry of nitrogenous compounds. November 3 at the Okhtinsky plant he was present when smokeless powder was tested on various types of weapons. On November 6, I sent a request there regarding smokeless powder technology. On November 27, he sent a letter to the Minister of War P. S. Vannovsky, proposing to include in the work organizations related to gunpowder production and chemists - specialists in explosives - L. N. Shishkov, N. P. Fedorov and G. A. Zabudsky.

D.I. Mendeleev attached great importance to the industrial and economic side of gunpowder making. Setting the task of using raw materials exclusively of domestic production, he studied the possibilities of obtaining sulfuric acid from local pyrites at P.K. Ushakov’s plant in Yelabuga and using cotton “ends” from Russian enterprises. The production of gunpowder in small quantities was established at the P.K. Ushakov plant in the city of Yelabuga, Vyatka province, and at the Shlisselburg plant near St. Petersburg. In the fall of 1892, tests were carried out, including by Admiral S. O. Makarov, of pyrocollodion gunpowder, which was highly praised by military experts. In a year and a half, under the leadership of D.I. Mendeleev, the technology of pyrocollodion was developed, which became the basis for smokeless domestic gunpowder, its characteristics superior to foreign ones.

D.I. Mendeleev paid considerable attention to issues of gunpowder making until 1898. The Bondyuzhinsky plant turned out to be unprofitable due to its remoteness from other gunpowder production facilities, including Okhtinsky; moreover, it was not classified. The transformation of the Marine Pyroxylin Plant in St. Petersburg to a new technology proposed by D. I. Mendeleev resulted in a confrontation of departmental interests: the commission of the Okhtinsky Plant groundlessly denies the pyrocollodium technology originality in relation to pyroxylin, - S. O. Makarov defended the priority of D in a memorandum I. Mendeleev, notes his “major services in resolving the issue of the type of smokeless gunpowder” for the Naval Ministry, in which, in the current situation, the scientist in 1895 refused the position of consultant. He seeks to remove secrecy - “Morskoy Sbornik” publishes his articles under the general heading “On pyrocollodium smokeless gunpowder” (1895, 1896), especially concentrating on the chemistry of the technology, with the reaction of pyrocollodium formation, an estimate of the volume of gases during its combustion, and analysis of raw materials. D.I. Mendeleev, comparing various gunpowders with pyrocollodium according to 12 parameters, states its obvious advantages, expressed by the constancy of composition, homogeneity, and the exception of “traces of detonation.”

In general, Dmitry Ivanovich devoted 68 articles to these studies - in the university laboratory, in factories, in the Scientific and Technical Laboratory of the Naval Ministry - continuing two scientific directions - solutions and hydrates, as well as forms of compounds.

And the story with pyrocollodium gunpowder ended with the fact that, thanks to the efforts of the French engineer Messen, who was none other than an expert at the Okhtinsky Powder Plant, interested in using his pyroxylin technology, the latter’s identity with the results of D.I. Mendeleev’s developments was recognized.

At that time, as, indeed, always in Russia, they attached little importance to domestic research, and, instead of developing them, they preferred and prefer to buy foreign privileges and patents - the right to “authorship” and the production of gunpowder D. I. Mendeleev brazenly appropriated to himself at that time, junior lieutenant of the US Navy, John Baptiste Bernadou, who was in St. Petersburg at that time, “part-time” an employee of ONI (English Office of Naval Intelligence - Office of Naval Intelligence), who obtained the recipe, and never having not previously been involved in this, suddenly in 1898 he became “fascinated by the development” of smokeless gunpowder, and in 1900 received a patent for “Colloid explosive and process of making same” - pyrocolloid gunpowder..., in his publications he reproduces the conclusions of D.I. Mendeleev. And Russia, “according to its eternal tradition,” in the First world war I bought this gunpowder in huge quantities in America, and the inventors are still listed as sailors - Lieutenant D. Bernadou and Captain J. Converse (English: George Albert Converse).

About electrolytic dissociation

There is an opinion that D.I. Mendeleev “did not accept” the concept of electrolytic dissociation, that he supposedly interpreted it incorrectly, or even did not understand it at all...

D.I. Mendeleev continued to show interest in the development of the theory of solutions in the late 1880s - 1890s. This topic acquired special significance and relevance after the formulation and successful application of the theory of electrolytic dissociation (S. Arrhenius, W. Ostwald, J. Van't Hoff). D.I. Mendeleev closely monitored the development of this new theory, but refrained from any categorical assessment of it.

D.I. Mendeleev thoroughly examines some of the arguments that supporters of the theory of electrolytic dissociation appeal to when proving the very fact of decomposition of salts into ions, including a decrease in the freezing point and other factors determined by the properties of solutions. His “Note on the dissociation of dissolved substances” is devoted to these and other questions related to the understanding of this theory.

He talks about the possibility of solvents combining with dissolved substances and their influence on the properties of solutions. Without making a categorical statement, D.I. Mendeleev, at the same time, points out the need not to discount the possibility of multilateral consideration of processes: “before recognizing the dissociation into ions M + X in a solution of salt MX, it follows, in the spirit of all information about solutions, look for aqueous solutions of MX salts for the effect of H2O producing MOH + HX particles, or for the dissociation of MX (n + 1) H2O hydrates into MOHmH2O + HX (n - m) H2O hydrates, or even direct MXnH2O hydrates into individual molecules.”

It follows from this that D.I. Mendeleev did not indiscriminately deny the theory itself, but rather pointed out the need for its development and understanding, taking into account the consistently developed theory of interaction between the solvent and the dissolved substance. In the notes of the section “Fundamentals of Chemistry” devoted to the topic, he writes: “... for persons wishing to study chemistry in more detail, it is very instructive to delve into the totality of information related to this, which can be found in the Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie for the years since 1888.”

In the late 1880s, intense debate ensued between supporters and opponents of the electrolytic dissociation theory. The controversy became most acute in England, and it was connected precisely with the works of D. I. Mendeleev. Data on dilute solutions formed the basis of the arguments of supporters of the theory, while opponents turned to the results of studies of solutions in wide concentration ranges. The greatest attention was paid to solutions of sulfuric acid, well studied by D. I. Mendeleev. Many English chemists consistently developed D.I. Mendeleev’s point of view on the presence of important points in “composition-property” diagrams. This information was used in criticism of the theory of electrolytic dissociation by H. Crompton, E. Pickering, G. E. Armstrong and other scientists. Their reference to the point of view of D.I. Mendeleev and data on sulfuric acid solutions as the main arguments for their correctness was regarded by many scientists, including German ones, as a contrast to the “hydrate theory of Mendeleev” to the theory of electrolytic dissociation. This led to a biased and sharply critical perception of the positions of D. I. Mendeleev, for example, by the same V. Nernst.

While these data relate to very complex cases of equilibria in solutions, when, in addition to dissociation, molecules of sulfuric acid and water form complex polymer ions. In concentrated solutions of sulfuric acid, parallel processes of electrolytic dissociation and association of molecules occur. Even the presence of various hydrates in the H2O - H2SO4 system, revealed due to electrical conductivity (by jumps in the composition-electrical conductivity line), does not give reason to deny the validity of the theory of electrolytic dissociation. An awareness of the fact that the association of molecules and the dissociation of ions occurs simultaneously is required.

Logical-thematic paradigm of the scientist’s creativity

All scientific, philosophical and journalistic works of D. I. Mendeleev are proposed to be considered integrally - in comparing the sections of this great heritage, both from the point of view of the “weight” of individual disciplines, directions and topics in it, and in the interaction of its main and particular components.

The director of the Museum-Archive of D. I. Mendeleev (LSU), Professor R. B. Dobrotin, developed a method in the 1970s that implies such a holistic approach to assessing the work of D. I. Mendeleev, taking into account the specific historical conditions in which it developed. Over the course of many years, studying and consistently comparing sections of this huge code, R. B. Dobrotin step by step revealed the internal logical connection of all its small and large parts; This was facilitated by the opportunity to work directly with the materials of the unique archive, and communication with many recognized specialists in various disciplines. The untimely death of a talented researcher did not allow him to fully develop this interesting undertaking, which in many ways anticipated the possibilities of both modern scientific methodology and new information technologies.

Constructed like a family tree, the diagram structurally reflects the thematic classification and allows us to trace the logical and morphological connections between the various directions of D. I. Mendeleev’s creativity.

Analysis of numerous logical connections allows us to identify 7 main areas of activity of the scientist - 7 sectors:

1. Periodic law, pedagogy, education.

2. Organic chemistry, the study of limiting forms of compounds.

3. Solutions, oil technology and economics of the oil industry.

4. Physics of liquids and gases, meteorology, aeronautics, environmental resistance, shipbuilding, development of the Far North

5. Standards, issues of metrology.

6. Chemistry solid, solid fuel and glass technology.

7. Biology, medicinal chemistry, agrochemistry, agriculture.

Each sector corresponds not to one topic, but to a logical chain of related topics - a “stream of scientific activity” that has a certain focus; the chains are not completely isolated - numerous connections can be traced between them (lines crossing the boundaries of sectors).

Thematic headings are presented in the form of circles (31). The number inside the circle corresponds to the number of works on the topic. Central - corresponds to the group of early works of D.I. Mendeleev, where research in various fields originates. The lines connecting the circles show connections between topics.

The circles are distributed in three concentric rings, corresponding to three aspects of activity: internal - theoretical work; secondary - technology, engineering and applied issues; external - articles, books and speeches on problems of economics, industry and education. The block, located behind the outer ring, and uniting 73 works on general issues of a socio-economic and philosophical nature, closes the scheme. This construction makes it possible to observe how a scientist in his work moves from one or another scientific idea to its technical development (lines from the inner ring), and from there to the solution of economic problems (lines from the middle ring).

Absence symbols in the publication “Chronicles of the life and work of D. I. Mendeleev” (“Science”. 1984), on the creation of which R. B. Dobrotin also worked at the first stage († 1980), there is also a lack of semantic-semiotic connection with the system proposed by the scientist . However, in the preface of this informative book it is noted that this “work can be considered as a sketch of the scientific biography of the scientist.”

D. I. Mendeleev and the world

The scientific interests and contacts of D. I. Mendeleev were so wide, and the needs of his worldview were so diverse that the scientist’s repeated business trips, private trips and travels, and finally his whole life - in this perspective, is a separate topic, of course, inextricably linked with all his creativity and views - this is the background and “spatial setting” of his multidimensional world.

He rose to transcendental heights and descended into mines, visited hundreds of plants and factories, universities, institutes and scientific societies, met, debated, collaborated and simply talked, shared his thoughts with hundreds of scientists, artists, peasants, entrepreneurs, workers and craftsmen, writers, statesmen and politicians. I took a lot of photographs and bought a lot of books and reproductions. The almost completely preserved library includes about 20 thousand publications, and the partially surviving huge archive and collection of visual and reproductive materials contain a lot of diverse printed storage units, diaries, workbooks, notebooks, manuscripts and extensive correspondence with Russian and foreign scientists, public figures and others correspondents.

Foreign trips and travel

Visiting several times in some years - 32 times in Germany, 33 in France, Switzerland - 10 times, 6 times in Italy, three times in Holland, and twice in Belgium, in Austria-Hungary - 8 times, 11 times - in England, was in Spain, Sweden and the USA. Regularly traveling through Poland (at that time part of the Russian Empire) to Western Europe, he made special visits there twice.

Here are the cities in these countries that are in one way or another connected with the life and work of D. I. Mendeleev:

Austria-Hungary (1864, 1873, 1898, 1900, 1902, 1905): Salzburg, Linz, Vienna, Innsbruck, Gmünden, Bad Ischl, Budapest

Bohemia (Czech Republic, part of Cisleithania - Austria-Hungary) (1864, 1900): Prague

Great Britain (1862, 1884, 1887, 1889, 1890, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1898, 1905): Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Woolwich, Queenborough, Dover

Germany (1859-1862, 1864, 1867, 1871, 1872, 1874, 1875, 1879, 1894-1898, 1900-1905): Hamburg, Bremen, Hanover, Braunschweig, Berlin, Magdeburg, Kassel, Cologne, Leipzig, Görlitz, Aachen , Bonn, Marburg, Erfurt, Dresden, Koblenz, Homburg, Giessen, Erfurt, Jena, Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Friedrichshafen, Bingen, Mainz, Worms, Darmstadt, Speyer, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Nuremberg, Karlsruhe, Baden, Stuttgart, Lindau, Ulm , Augsburg, Freiburg, Munich

Holland (1862, 1875, 1887) and Belgium (1862, 1897): Amsterdam, Leiden, Delft, Rotterdam, Vlissingen, Ostend, Brussels

Spain (1881): Madrid, Seville, Toledo

Italy (1860, 1864, 1879, 1881, 1904): Aosta, Chiavenna, Menaggio, Porlezza, Ivrea, Arona, Como, Bellagio, Turin, Novara, Bergamo, Padua, Brescia, Verona, Milan, Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence , Civita Vecchia, Rome, Albano, Naples, Anacapri, Castellammare, Sorrento, Messina, Palermo, Catania, Canicatti, Caltanisetta, Girgenti, Bozen

Poland (Russian Empire) (1900, 1902): Warsaw, Breslau, Krakow, Wielinka

North American United States: Niagara, Buffalo, Parker, New York, Carne City, Millerstone, Freeport, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington

Finland (Russian Empire) (1857): Ikati-Govi

France (1859, 1860, 1862, 1867, 1874-1876, 1878, 1879, 1881, 1887, 1890, 1894-1897, 1899-1906): Biarritz, Montpellier, Nîmes, Tarascon, Arles, Marseille, Cannes, Aix, Lyon , Le Havre, Paris, Metz, Dijon, Strasbourg, Dol, Chaux-de-Fonds

Croatia (part of Transleithania - in Austria-Hungary) (1900): Abbazia

Switzerland (1859, 1860, 1862, 1864, 1871, 1872, 1897, 1898): Basel, Aargau, Schafhausen, Neuchâtel, Olten, Zurich, Romanshorn, Yverdon, Bern, Lucerne, Zug, Eisiedeln, Rorschach, Brienz, Lausanne, Thun , Meiringen, Brunnen, Interlaken, Altdorf, Hur, Chillon, Vevey, Flueln, Grindelwald, Villeneuve, Andermatt, Splügen, Letchen, Sion, Brig, Zermatt, Locarno, Bellinzona, Lugano, Geneva

Confession

Awards, academies and societies

Order of St. Vladimir, 1st class

Order of St. Vladimir, II degree

Order of St. Alexander Nevsky

Order of the White Eagle

Order of St. Anne, 1st class

Order of St. Anne, 2nd class

Order of St. Stanislaus, 1st class

Legion of Honor

The scientific authority of D.I. Mendeleev was enormous. The list of his titles and ranks includes more than a hundred items. Almost all Russian and most respected foreign academies, universities, and scientific societies elected him as an honorary member. However, he signed his works, private and official appeals without indicating his involvement in them: “D. Mendeleev" or "Professor Mendeleev", rarely mentioning any honorary titles awarded to him.

H. Davy Medal, which the Royal Society of London awarded in 1882 to D. I. Mendeleev and L. Meyer.

G. Colpey Medal, which was awarded to D.I. Mendeleev by the Royal Society of London in 1905.

Doctoral title

D. I. Mendeleev - Doctor of the Turin Academy of Sciences (1893) and the University of Cambridge (1894); Doctor of Chemistry from St. Petersburg University (1865), Doctor of Law from Edinburgh (1884) and Princeton (1896) universities, - University of Glasgow (1904); Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford University (1894); Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Liberal Arts from the University of Göttingen (1887); - Member of the Royal Societies: London (Royal Society for the Promotion of Natural Sciences, 1892), Edinburgh (1888), Dublin (1886); - Member of the Academies of Sciences: Rome (Accademia dei Lincei, 1893), Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden (1905), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1889), National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Boston, 1903), Royal Academy of Sciences (Copenhagen, 1889) ), Royal Irish Academy (1889), South Slavic (Zagreb), Czech Academy of Sciences, Literature and Arts (1891), Krakow (1891), Irish (R. Irish Academy, Dublin), Belgian Academy of Sciences, Literature and Fine Arts (accocié, 1896), Academy of Arts (St. Petersburg, 1893); honorary member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London (1891); corresponding member of the St. Petersburg (1876), Paris (1899), Prussian (1900), Hungarian (1900), Bologna (1901), Serbian (1904) academies of sciences; honorary member of Moscow (1880), Kiev (1880), Kazan (1880), Kharkov (1880), Novorossiysk (1880), Yuryevsky (1902), St. Petersburg (1903), Tomsk (1904) universities, as well as the Institute of Agriculture economy and forestry in New Alexandria (1895), St. Petersburg Technological (1904) and St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institutes, St. Petersburg Medical-Surgical (1869) and Petrovsk Agricultural and Forestry (1881) Academies, Moscow Technical School (1880).

D. I. Mendeleev was elected an honorary member of the Russian Physico-Chemical (1880), Russian Technical (1881), Russian Astronomical (1900), St. Petersburg Mineralogical (1890) Society; and more - about 30 agricultural, medical, pharmaceutical and other Russian societies - independent and university; - Society of Biological Chemistry (International Association for the Promotion of Research, 1899), Society of Naturalists in Braunschweig (1888), English (1883), American (1889), German (1894) Chemical Societies, Physical Society in Frankfurt am Main (1875) and Society physical sciences in Bucharest (1899), Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (1888), Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (1893), Royal Society of Sciences and Letters in Gothenburg (1886), Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society (1889) and Cambridge Philosophical (1897) Societies, Royal Philosophical Society in Glasgow (1904), Scientific Society of Antonio Alzate (Mexico City, 1904), - International Committee of Weights and Measures (1901) and many other domestic and foreign scientific institutions.

The scientist was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society of London (1882), the Medal of the Academy of Meteorological Aerostatics (Paris, 1884), the Faraday Medal of the English Chemical Society (1889), the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London (1905) and many other awards.

Nobel epic

The classification of secrecy, which allows the circumstances of the nomination and consideration of candidates to be made public, implies a period of half a century, that is, what happened in the first decade of the 20th century in the Nobel Committee was known already in the 1960s.

Foreign scientists nominated Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev for the Nobel Prize in 1905, 1906 and 1907 (compatriots never). The status of the award implied a qualification: the discovery was no more than 30 years old. But the fundamental importance of the periodic law was confirmed precisely at the beginning of the 20th century, with the discovery of inert gases. In 1905, D. I. Mendeleev’s candidacy was on the “small list” - with the German organic chemist Adolf Bayer, who became the laureate. In 1906, it was put forward by an even larger number of foreign scientists. The Nobel Committee awarded D. I. Mendeleev the prize, but the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences refused to approve this decision, in which the influence of S. Arrhenius, the 1903 laureate for the theory of electrolytic dissociation, played a decisive role - as stated above, there was a misconception about the rejection of this theory by D. I. Mendeleev; The laureate was the French scientist A. Moissan - for the discovery of fluorine. In 1907, it was proposed to “share” the prize between the Italian S. Cannizzaro and D.I. Mendeleev (Russian scientists again did not participate in his nomination). However, on February 2, the scientist passed away.

Meanwhile, we should not forget about the conflict between D.I. Mendeleev and the Nobel brothers (during the 1880s), who, taking advantage of the crisis in the oil industry, and striving for a monopoly on Baku oil, on its production and distillation, for this purpose speculated on “rumors breathing with intrigue” about her exhaustion. At the same time, D.I. Mendeleev, while conducting research on the composition of oil from different fields, developed a new method of fractional distillation, which made it possible to achieve the separation of mixtures of volatile substances. He conducted a long polemic with L. E. Nobel and his associates, fighting against the predatory consumption of hydrocarbons, with ideas and methods that contributed to this; among other things, to the great displeasure of his opponent, who used not entirely plausible methods to assert his interests, he proved the groundlessness of the opinion about the impoverishment of Caspian sources. By the way, it was D.I. Mendeleev who proposed the construction of oil pipelines back in the 1860s, which were successfully introduced in the 1880s by the Nobels, who, however, reacted extremely negatively to his proposal for delivering crude oil to Central Russia in this and other ways, because, well aware of the benefit in this for the state as a whole, they also saw the damage to their own monopoly. D. I. Mendeleev devoted about 150 works to oil (the study of composition and properties, distillation and other issues related to this topic).

Sources

ru.wikipedia.org Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia

rulex.ru Russian biographical dictionary

Mendeleev Dmitry Ivanovich

(b. 1834 – d. 1907)

A great Russian chemist and teacher, a versatile scientist whose interests extended to the fields of physics, economics, agriculture, metrology, geography, meteorology, and aeronautics. He discovered the periodic law of chemical elements - one of the basic laws of natural science.

In mid-February 1869, it was cloudy and frosty in St. Petersburg. The trees in the university garden, where the windows of the Mendeleevs’ apartment overlooked, creaked in the wind. While still in bed, Dmitry Ivanovich drank a mug of warm milk, then got up and went to have breakfast. He was in a wonderful mood. At that moment, an unexpected thought occurred to him: to compare chemical elements with similar atomic masses and their properties. Without thinking twice, on a piece of paper he wrote down the symbols of chlorine and potassium, the atomic masses of which are quite close, and sketched out the symbols of other elements, looking for similar “paradoxical” pairs among them: fluorine and sodium, bromine and rubidium, iodine and cesium...

After breakfast, the scientist locked himself in his office. He took out a stack of business cards from the desk and began writing on the back of them the symbols of the elements and their main chemical properties. After some time, the household heard exclamations coming from the office: “Oooh!” Horned. Wow, what a horned one! I will defeat you. I'll kill you!" This meant that Dmitry Ivanovich had creative inspiration. Throughout the day, Mendeleev worked, only stopping briefly to play with his daughter Olga, have lunch and dinner. On the evening of February 17, 1869, he completely rewrote the table he had compiled and, under the title “Experience of a system of elements based on their atomic weight and chemical similarity,” sent it to the printing house, making notes for typesetters and putting a date.

...This is how the periodic law was discovered, the modern formulation of which is as follows: “Properties simple substances, as well as the forms and properties of compounds of elements are periodically dependent on the charge of the nuclei of their atoms.” Mendeleev was only 35 years old at that time.

And the brilliant scientist was born on January 27, 1834 in Tobolsk and was the last, seventeenth child in the family of the director of the local gymnasium, Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev. By that time, two brothers and five sisters remained alive in the Mendeleev family. Nine children died in infancy, and three of them were not even given names by their parents. In the year Mitya was born, his father went blind and left the service, switching to a meager pension. The main burden of caring for a family of 10 people fell on the shoulders of the mother, Maria Dmitrievna, who came from the old Tobolsk merchant family of the Kornilievs.

From her brother, who lived in Moscow, Maria Dmitrievna received a power of attorney to manage a small glass factory that belonged to him, and the Mendeleev family moved to its location - to the village of Aremzyanskoye, 25 km from Tobolsk. This is where Mitya spent his preschool years. He grew up in the lap of nature, without any embarrassment, played with his peers, the children of local peasants, in the evenings he listened to his nanny’s tales about Siberian antiquity and the stories of an old soldier who lived out his life with them about the heroic campaigns of A.V. Suvorov.

At the age of 7, Mitya entered the gymnasium. There were a lot of people in the Mendeleevs' house back then. interesting people. Dmitry’s teacher was P.P. Ershov himself, the author of the famous “The Little Humpbacked Horse”, his school friend was the Annenkovs’ son Vladimir, the Decembrist N.V. Basargin was considered a great friend at home... Mendeleev’s brothers and sisters grew up and left their home. By the time he graduated from Mitya gymnasium, his father died, and the glass factory in Aremzyan burned down. Nothing kept Maria Dmitrievna in Tobolsk anymore. At her own peril and risk, she decided to go to Moscow so that her son could continue his education.

So in 1849 Mendeleev ended up in Moscow in the house of his mother’s brother V.D. Korniliev. Efforts to enter Moscow University were not crowned with success, since graduates of the Tobolsk gymnasium could only study at Kazan University. The next year, after an unsuccessful attempt to enter the Medical-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg, Dmitry, thanks to the petition of one of his father’s friends, who taught at the Main Pedagogical Institute, was enrolled there in the Faculty of Science and Mathematics on government support. His teachers were the most famous scientists of that time - A. A. Voskresensky (chemistry), M. V. Ostrogradsky (higher mathematics), E. X. Lenz (physics).

Studying was not easy for Dmitry at first. In his first year, he managed to get unsatisfactory grades in all subjects except mathematics. But in senior years, things went differently - Mendeleev’s average annual grade was four and a half (out of a possible five). He graduated from the institute in 1855 with a gold medal and could have remained a teacher there, but his health forced him to leave for the south - doctors suspected Dmitry of tuberculosis, from which his two sisters and father died.

In August 1855, Mendeleev arrived in Simferopol, but classes at the local gymnasium were stopped due to the ongoing Crimean War. In the fall of the same year, he moved to Odessa and taught at the gymnasium at the Richelieu Lyceum, and the next year he returned to St. Petersburg, passed his master's exams, defended his thesis “Specific Volumes” and received the right to lecture on organic chemistry at the university. In January 1857, Dmitry Ivanovich was approved as a private assistant professor at St. Petersburg University.

The next few years were spent on scientific trips abroad (Paris, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe), where Privatdozent Mendeleev met with foreign colleagues and participated in the first International Congress of Chemists. During these years, he was engaged in research in the field of capillary phenomena and the expansion of liquids, and one of the results of his work was the discovery of the absolute boiling point. Returning from abroad in 1861, the 27-year-old scientist wrote the textbook “Organic Chemistry” in three months, which, according to K. A. Timiryazev, was “excellent in clarity and simplicity of presentation, having no parallel in European literature "

However, these were difficult times for Mendeleev, when, as he wrote in his diary, “coats and boots were sewn on credit, I was always hungry.” Apparently, under the pressure of circumstances, he renewed his acquaintance with Feozva Nikitichnaya Leshcheva, with whom he had been friends back in Tobolsk, and in April 1862 he got married. The stepdaughter of the famous P.P. Ershov, Fiza (as she was called in the family), was six years older than her husband. By character, inclinations, and interests, she did not make a harmonious couple for her husband. As if sensing this, the young scientist, before walking down the aisle, made an attempt to abandon his betrothed, but his older sister Olga Ivanovna, the wife of the Decembrist N.V. Basargin, who had great influence on him, decided to shame her brother. She wrote to him: “Remember also what the great Goethe said: “There is no greater sin than deceiving a girl.” You are engaged, declared a groom, what position will she be in if you now refuse?”

Mendeleev yielded to his sister, and this concession entailed a relationship that lasted for many years and was painful for both spouses. Of course, this did not become clear right away, and after the wedding the newlyweds, in the most rosy mood, went on a honeymoon around Europe.

In 1865, Mendeleev defended his doctoral dissertation “On the combination of alcohol with water,” after which he was approved as a professor at St. Petersburg University in the department of technical chemistry. Three years later, he began writing the textbook “Fundamentals of Chemistry” and immediately encountered difficulties in systematizing the factual material. Pondering the structure of the textbook, he gradually came to the conclusion that the properties of simple substances and the atomic masses of elements are connected by a certain pattern. Fortunately, the young scientist did not know about the many attempts of his predecessors to arrange chemical elements in increasing order of their atomic masses and about the incidents that arose in this case.

The decisive stage of his thoughts came on February 17, 1869, it was then that the first version of the periodic table was written. The scientist subsequently spoke about this event as follows: “I’ve been thinking about it [the system] for maybe twenty years, but you think: I was sitting there and suddenly... it’s ready.”

Dmitry Ivanovich sent printed sheets with a table of elements to domestic and foreign colleagues and, with a sense of accomplishment, went to the Tver province to inspect cheese factories. Before leaving, he still managed to hand over to N.A. Menshutkin, an organic chemist and future historian of chemistry, the manuscript of the article “Relationship of properties with the atomic weight of elements” - for publication in the journal of the Russian Chemical Society and for communication at the upcoming meeting of the society.

The report made on March 6, 1869 by Menshutkin did not at first attract much attention from specialists, and the president of the society, academician N.N. Zinin, stated that Mendeleev was not doing what a real researcher should do. True, two years later, after reading Dmitry Ivanovich’s article “The Natural System of Elements and Its Application to Indicating the Properties of Some Elements,” Zinin changed his mind and wrote to the author: “Very, very good, very excellent connections, even fun to read, God grant you good luck in experimental confirmation of your conclusions.”

The periodic law became the foundation on which Mendeleev created his most famous textbook, “Fundamentals of Chemistry.” The book went through eight editions during the author’s lifetime, and was last reprinted in 1947. According to foreign scientists, all chemistry textbooks of the second half of the 19th century. were built on the same model, and “only the only attempt to truly move away from classical traditions deserves to be noted - this is the attempt of Mendeleev, his manual on chemistry was conceived according to a completely special plan.” In terms of the richness and courage of scientific thought, the originality of the coverage of the material, and the influence on the development and teaching of inorganic chemistry, this work of Dmitry Ivanovich had no equal in the world chemical literature.

After the discovery of his law, Mendeleev had much more to do. The reason for the periodic changes in the properties of elements remained unknown; The structure of the periodic system itself, where properties were repeated through seven elements in the eighth, could not be explained. The author did not place all the elements in order of increasing atomic masses; in some cases he was more guided by the similarity of chemical properties.

The most important thing in the discovery of the periodic law was the prediction of the existence of chemical elements not yet known to science. Under aluminum, Mendeleev left a place for its analogue “eka-aluminium”, under boron - for “eka-boron”, and under silicon - for “eca-silicon”. This is how he named the yet undiscovered chemical elements and even assigned them corresponding symbols.

It should be said that not all foreign colleagues immediately appreciated the significance of Mendeleev’s discovery. It changed a lot in the world of established ideas. Thus, the German physical chemist W. Ostwald, a future Nobel Prize laureate, argued that it was not a law that had been discovered, but a principle of classification of “something uncertain.” The German chemist R. Bunsen, who discovered two new alkali elements, rubidium and cesium, in 1861, said that Mendeleev carried chemists “into the far-fetched world of pure abstractions.” Professor of the University of Leipzig G. Kolbe in 1870 called Mendeleev’s discovery “speculative”...

However, the time for triumph soon came. In 1875, the French chemist L. de Boisbaudran discovered the “eka-aluminium” predicted by Mendeleev, named it gallium and declared: “I think there is no need to insist on the enormous importance of confirming the theoretical conclusions of Mr. Mendeleev.” Four years later, the Swedish chemist L. Nilsson discovered scandium: “There remains no doubt that “ekabor” was discovered in “scandium”... This clearly confirms the considerations of the Russian chemist, which not only made it possible to predict the existence of scandium and gallium, but also to foresee in advance their most important properties."

In 1886, a professor at the Mining Academy in Freiburg, the German chemist K. Winkler, while analyzing the rare mineral argyrodite, discovered another element predicted by Mendeleev - “ecosilicite”, and named it germanium. At the same time, Mendeleev was unable to predict the existence of a group of noble gases, and at first there was no place for them in the periodic table. As a result, the discovery of argon by English scientists W. Ramsay and J. Rayleigh in 1894 immediately caused heated discussions and doubts about the periodic law and the periodic system of elements. After several years of deliberation, Mendeleev agreed with the presence in his proposed system of a “zero” group of chemical elements, which was occupied by other noble gases discovered after argon. In 1905, the scientist wrote: “Apparently, the future does not threaten the periodic law with destruction, but only promises superstructures and development, although as a Russian they wanted to erase me, especially the Germans.”

Four years before the opening of the periodic law, Dmitry Ivanovich found relative peace in family affairs. In 1865, he bought the Boblovo estate in the Moscow province not far from Klin. Now he could relax there every summer with his family and study agricultural chemistry, which he was interested in then. On the existing 380 acres of land, Mendeleev conducted technical and economic experiments, organizing on a scientific basis the use of fertilizers, equipment, rational systems land use and doubling grain yields in five years.

In 1867, Mendeleev became the head of the department of general and inorganic chemistry at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University, and at the end of the year he was given the long-awaited university apartment. In May of the following year, their beloved daughter Olga was born into the family... But in the late 1870s. the relationship between Dmitry Ivanovich and his wife Feozva Nikitichna completely deteriorated. Mendeleev felt lonely and alienated in his family. “I am a man, not God, and you are not an angel,” he wrote to his wife, admitting his and her weaknesses. Indeed, endowed by nature with a choleric temperament, Dmitry Ivanovich was a quick-tempered and irritable person. Anything that distracted him from his work easily made him angry. And then the slightest - from the point of view of others - trifle could cause a violent outburst in him: Mendeleev shouted, slammed the door and ran to his office. The wife’s serious illness introduced new complications into family life. Moreover, after 14 years of marriage, Feozva Nikitichna no longer had the strength to endure either her husband’s difficult temper or his love interests. She left with the children for Boblovo, giving her husband complete freedom, provided that the official marriage was not dissolved.

At this time, Mendeleev was passionately in love with Anna Ivanovna Popova, the daughter of a Don Cossack from Uryupinsk, who attended the drawing school at the Academy of Arts and periodically went abroad. Anna was old enough to be the scientist's daughter - she was 26 years younger than him. Since the wife did not agree to a divorce, and divorce by court was a very difficult matter at that time, Mendeleev’s comrades were seriously afraid of a possible tragic outcome: in their immediate circle, two people had already committed suicide because of unhappy love. Then the rector of the university, A. N. Beketov, took upon himself mediation, went to Boblovo and received Feozva Nikitichna’s consent to officially divorce her husband. In 1881, the marriage was finally dissolved, and Dmitry Ivanovich went to Italy to join his beloved. In May of the same year they returned to Russia, and in December their daughter Lyuba was born, who was actually illegitimate.

Having agreed to the divorce, the consistory forbade Mendeleev to get married for the next six years. In addition, under the terms of the divorce, the entire professor’s salary went to support the first family, and new family lived on the money that the scientist earned by writing scientific articles and textbooks. However, in April 1882, contrary to the decision of the consistory, the priest of the Admiralty Church of St. Petersburg married Mendeleev and Popova for 10 thousand rubles, for which he was deprived of his clergy.

During this period, the scientist continued his research in the fields of meteorology, aeronautics, and fluid resistance. He worked in Italy and England, studied solutions, and flew in a Russian hot air balloon, observing a solar eclipse. And in 1890, Professor of St. Petersburg University D.I. Mendeleev resigned in protest against the oppression of students.

For the next five years, Mendeleev was a consultant to the Scientific and Technical Laboratory of the Maritime Ministry, planned to take part in an expedition to the North, and created an icebreaker project. At this time, he invented a new type of smokeless gunpowder (pyrocollodia) and organized its production. In addition, he led a large expedition to study the industry of the Urals, participated in the World Exhibition in Paris, and developed a program for the economic transformation of Russia. In his last major works, “Treasured Thoughts” and “Towards Knowledge

Russia”, the scientist summarized his ideas related to social, scientific and economic activities.

In 1892, Mendeleev was appointed custodian and then manager of the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures, which he created, where he conducted research and experiments until the end of his life. In 1895, the scientist became blind, but continued to work: business papers were read aloud to him, and he dictated orders to the secretary. Professor I.V. Kostenich removed the cataract as a result of two operations, and soon vision returned...

Mendeleev had three children from his first marriage - Masha, Volodya and Olga (all died during Dmitry Ivanovich's lifetime) and four from his second - Lyuba, Vanya, Vasily and Maria (Maria Dmitrievna later became the director of her father's museum), whom he loved madly . One episode especially vividly characterizes the power of the fatherly love of the famous scientist. In May 1889 he was invited by the British Chemical Society to speak at the annual Faraday Readings. The most outstanding chemists received this honor. Mendeleev was going to devote his report to the doctrine of periodicity, which was already gaining universal recognition. This performance was to truly be his “finest hour.” But two days before the appointed date, he received a telegram from St. Petersburg about Vasily’s illness. Without a moment’s hesitation, the scientist decided to immediately return home, and the text of the report “Periodic Law of Chemical Elements” was read for him by J. Dewar.

Mendeleev's eldest son Vladimir became a naval officer. He graduated with honors from the Naval Cadet Corps and sailed on the frigate “Memory of Azov” along the Far Eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean. In 1898, Vladimir retired to devote himself to the development of the “Project for raising the level of the Azov Sea by damming the Kerch Strait,” but died suddenly a few months later. The following year, my father published “The Project...” and wrote with deep bitterness in the preface: “My clever, loving, gentle, good-natured first-born son, on whom I expected to entrust part of my behests, died, since I knew high and truthful, modest and at the same time, deep thoughts for the benefit of the homeland with which he was imbued.” Dmitry Ivanovich took the death of Vladimir very hard, which noticeably affected his health.

The daughter of Mendeleev and Popova, Lyubov Dmitrievna, in 1903 married Alexander Blok, the famous Russian poet of the Silver Age, with whom she had been friends since childhood and who dedicated “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” to her. Lyuba and Alexander often met at the Moscow estate of Blok’s grandfather, located not far from Boblovo, and together with local youth they staged plays in which Blok was the main actor, and often the director. Lyuba graduated from the Higher Women's Courses and played in drama clubs, and then in the troupe of V. Meyerhold and in the theater of V. Komissarzhevskaya. After the death of her husband, she studied the history and theory of ballet art and gave acting lessons to the famous ballerinas G. Kirillova and N. Dudinskaya.

Blok’s letter to his bride contains the following lines about her father: “He has long known everything that happens in the world. Penetrated everything. Nothing is hidden from him. His knowledge is the most complete. It comes from genius; this does not happen with ordinary people... He has nothing separate or fragmentary - everything is inseparable.”

“...I’m surprised at what I haven’t done in my scientific life. And I think it was done well,” wrote Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev several years before his death. He died on January 20, 1907 in St. Petersburg from cardiac paralysis and was buried at the Volkov cemetery, not far from the graves of his mother and eldest son. During his lifetime, the world-famous scientist received over 130 diplomas and honorary titles from Russian and foreign academies and scientific societies. In Russia, the Mendeleev Prizes were established for outstanding achievements in the field of chemistry and physics. Now the name of the outstanding encyclopedist scientist is borne by: the All-Union Chemical Society, the All-Russian Research Institute of Metrology, the St. Petersburg Institute of Chemical Technology, an underwater ridge in the Arctic Ocean, an active volcano on the Kuril Islands, a crater on the Moon, a research vessel for oceanographic research, 101st chemical element and mineral – mendeleevite.

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