![]() I heard how this new understanding was used to recalculate and reassign many elemental atomic weights. While at Heidelberg I was able to attend the first Chemical Congress, held at Karlsruhe in Germany in 1860, where I heard the Italian chemist Stanislao Cannizzaro speak and re-present his countryman Amadeo Avogadro’s hypothesis, making the distinction between atoms and molecules and defining valence more accurately. There I became totally engrossed in chemical research, studying the capillary effect and the critical point of alcohol–water solutions. I found the laboratories there very uncomfortable, being noisy and full of fumes – so much so that I set up my own laboratory in my apartment. I was glad when my posting was over and in 1859 I left for Heidelberg, Germany, where I had successfully applied for a government-funded visit to the laboratories of Robert Bunsen. My posting after graduation was a regional school in the Crimea, but with war breaking out in the area it was a difficult place to teach, and I had to move around to avoid the conflict. Apart from being a dedicated teacher, he was an acclaimed organic chemist, making several important contributions to the field, including the isolation and identification of theobromine in cacao (coffee) beans. Professor Voskresenskii continued to be a significant influence throughout the rest of Dmitri’s life. For this research I was given the Gold Medal, and in 1856 I successfully completed all my studies and graduated from the college.ĭmitri was thus a trained teacher, and clarity of presentation in an ordered manner would have been of utmost importance to him. In this project, I developed important skills of classification and looking at the physical properties of compounds and linking them with structure. ![]() For my master’s research project, under the mentorship of Professor Voskresenskii, I studied organic isomorphism, where two different organic molecules have the same crystalline structure. Voskresenskii, looked out for me and encouraged my scientific interests. A professor from the university, Alexandr A. ![]() But the college looked after me well as I studied and lived there. I was 16 when I arrived and I found it difficult at first – the other students were from local areas and could visit nearby family, but my mother had died shortly after bringing me there and most of my family were in far-off Siberia. The college was in the grounds of the University of St Petersburg, with university students and the public having limited access. The college trained teachers and conducted basic scientific research in return for newly graduated teachers completing placements in a regional area for two years. My beloved mother noticed that I was doing well in Science subjects at secondary school and, after I graduated, she endured the long and arduous journey to bring me to a teachers’ college in St Petersburg (see July/August issue, p. 14, for Maria Mendeleeva’s story). My story starts where I was born – in a small village just outside Tobolsk in Siberia, many kilometres east of where I am now. So, let us begin.I am 35 years old and have recently been appointed Professor of General Chemistry at St Petersburg University, St Petersburg, Russia. I would like to tell you how I came to make this discovery. It is February 1869 and I, Dmitri Mendeleev, have just completed an important figure for my textbook, Osnovy khimii, which orders the 63 known elements to demonstrate their periodicity of chemical and physical properties.
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