Dmitri Mendeleev and His Contributions

Birth            :   8 February 1834 in Tobisk, Russia Full Name   :  Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev Spous(s)      :  Ivan Pavlochich Mendeeev and Maria Dmitrirvna Kornilieva Known for  :  Formulating the periodic table of chemical elements. Death          :  2nd February  1907

Early life and education- a time line

                                                    

Figure 1: Parents of Mendeleev

Mendeleev was born as the youngest of between 11 and 17 siblings. His father was a principal and teacher in a local gymnastic school. When Dmitri was a little boy, His father went blind and has to give up working. His mother was forced to work and she restarted a glass factory. At the age of 13, after the death of his father and the distraction of his mother’s factory on fire, he attended the gymnasium in Tobolsk.

Mendeleev was a brilliant student and he completed his matriculation with first rank. In 1849, his mother took him across Russia from Siberia to Moscow with the aim of getting Mendeleev enrolled at Moscow University.

1849

Ø   Moscow University- Rejected

1850

Ø  Saint Petersburg – Main Pedagogical Institute- Graduated.

1859-1861

Ø  Worked on capillarity of liquids and the working of spectroscope in Heisonburg

Ø  The book “ Organic chemistry” published (1861)

Ø  Won him Domindov prize of Saint Petersburg academy of sciences

1862 April 27

Ø  Married to Feozva Nikitichna

1864

Ø  Worked as a professor at the Saint Petersburg technological institute

1865

Ø  Worked as a professor at Saint Petersburg state university.

1865

Ø  Ph.D. in “combination of water in alcohol”

1867

Ø   worked as inorganic chemistry teacher at Saint Petersburg university

1871

Ø  Saint Petersburg into an internationally recognized center for chemistry research.

 

Books

Ø  The principles of chemistry (2 vol.)(1868-1870)

Ø  Organic chemistry (1861)

Awards

Ø  Domindov prize – “Organic chemistry”

Ø  Davy medal from Royal Society of England (1882)

Ø  Copley medal from Royal Society of England (1905)

Figure 2 : Davi medal

Honor

Ø   Appointed as the director of the international bureau of weights and measures (1893)

Ø   Selected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science(1905)

Ø   The crater on moon (Mendeleev), Element no: 101 (the radioactive mendelevium), metro station in Moscow are named after him.

     

Figure 3: Mendelevium,crater on moon, sculpture of Mendeleev respectively

Contributions

Ø   Periodical table

•          Johann Dobereiner , John Newlands, Dimitri Mendeleev and Lother Meyer Glen Seaborg are the scientists who worked in the area of periodic table.

•          Mendeleev  was the first scientist who introduce a tabular format of the elements in 1871

•          He arrange elements in the increasing order of their atomic mass

•          He states that

“ The physical and chemical properties of the elements are a periodic function of their atomic weights. ”

This is known as Mendeleev’s law of periodicity.

•          Mendeleev’s breakthrough was to see that the common properties and the atomic weight of an element could be combine in a single framework

Figure 4 : Dmitri Mendeleev and his famous periodic table.

•          He discovered the periodic table,25 years before the discovery of the elements. By using it he predict the properties of elements yet to be discovered.

•           He found several gaps and gap elements like Eka- boron, Eka- silicon and Eka- aluminium (Sc, Ge and Ga respectively in the modern periodic table by Lother Meyer Glen Seaborg)

Ø   Petroleum Industry in Russia

•          “ The capital fact to note is that petroleum was born in the depth of the earth and it is only there that we must seek its origin” – Mendeleev

•          He investigated the composition of oil field and helped to found the 1^st oil refinery in Russia

Ø   Investigated the expansion of liquids by heat

•          He investigated the heat expansion of liquids and devised a formula similar to Gay-Lussac’s law of uniformity of expansion of gases and also he Introduced the term “Critical Temperature”

T_c = 8a/27Rb

•          “ T at which cohesion and heat vaporization become equal to zero and the liquid changes to vapor, irrespective of the P and V “

Ø   Determining the nature of solutions

•          Solutions are chemical combination in fixed proportions

•          Investigate the elasticity of gases

                                                                 “ The volume of gas varies inversely with its pressure”

Ø   Invent pyrocollodin  

•          kind of smokeless powder

•           Based on nitrocellulose

•           Manufactured for Russian Navy  (1892)

Ø   Introduced metric system in Russia