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THE' :::::: Id. R 9 LAW In 1884 the Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay went to London to attend a dinner honoring William Perkin, the discoverer of mauve, the first synthetic dye. Arriving early, he encountered "a peculiar foreigner, every hair of whose head acted in independence of every other." When the foreigner approached, bowing, Ramsay sai(l, "We are to have a goo(1 attendance, I think?" Discovering that the man (li(ln't speak English, Ramsey aske(1 him if he spoke German. "Ja, ein wenig" ("Yes, a little"), the foreigner replie(l. "Ich bin Mendeleev." Ramsay related later that, "He is a nice sort of fellow, but his German is not perfect. He said he was raised in East Siberia and knew no Russian until he was seventeen years old. I suppose he is a Kalmuck or one of those outIan(lish creatures." Dimitri Men(leleev~ wasn't a Kalmuck (the Kalmucks were Buddhist Mongols), but he did have Like many other Russian names, "Mendeleev" can be transliterated in several different ways. "Mendeleyev" has been the most common, but "Mendeleev" is a bit more accurate. 157
158 THE LAST SORCERERS something of an outlandish appearance. He dressed reasonably well, but his unkempt white hair fell to his shoulders. He was in the habit of having his hair and beard cut once a year, and to some he might have looked more like a Siberian shaman than a distinguished chemist. It was Mendeleev who discovered the periodic law, a principle that describes the periodicities that are observed in the properties of the chemical elements. This enabled him to predict the existence of as-yet-undiscovered elements, to predict their atomic weights, and to describe their chemical and physical properties as well. It was Mendeleev who found the natural order in the elements that his predecessors Newlands, Chancourtis, and Odling had been seeking. Mendeleev couldn't explain why there were so many elements; he didn't even try to do that. But he did discover the existence of striking patterns. FIBERS Mendeleev was born in Tobolsk in western Siberia in 1834. His father was director of the local high school and the family lived comfort- ably. However, all that suddenly changed when Mendeleev was still a child. His father Ivan became blind from cataracts and had to resign his post. He went to Moscow to have them removed and had an operation that was a partial success. He could see again and recognize faces. However, he was still unable to read books and thus couldn't resume his career, and he did not live long after the operation. After his (leash, of tuberculosis, his wi(low got his pension, but the money was far from enough to support the family. Fortunately, Mendeleev's mother, Maria, was a remarkable woman. Her father had established the first printing press and pub- lished the first newspaper in Siberia. Maria apparently inherited some of his (determination. When her brother wanted to reopen a run(lown glass factory that he owned at Aremziansk, a village 17 miles from Tobolsk, he wrote to ask her to recommend a capable manager and
THE PERIODIC LAW 159 she recommended herself. Her brother gave her the job, and the family moved to Aremziansk. One of the people living in Aremziansk was Nicole Bassargin, who had been a Decembrist. The Decembrists were a society of revolutionaries that was organized in the 1820s and made up primarily of members of the upper class with military backgrounds. Their goals were the institution of a constitutional monarchy and the freeing of the serfs. On December 14, 1825, they staged an uprising in St. Petersburg, which was suppressed by the new Tsar, Nicholas I. Five of the leaders were executed, and more than a hundred were sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. After making the acquaintance of the Mendeleev family, Bassargin courted and later married Mendeleev's older sister Olga. Since his release after serving his sentence he had built up a large library, and he had a great interest in science. During his visits to the family, he often discussed science with Mendeleev. After his marriage, he settled in the nearby village of Yaloutorvsk. But his visits to the Mendeleev home continued, and he continued to tutor Mendeleev in the sciences. In 1849, the same year that Dostoevski was arrested and sen- tence(1 to a Siberian labor camp, (lisaster struck the family again. The glass factory caught fire one winter night and burned to the ground. But the 57-year-old Maria Mendeleev again showed her determina- tion. She (leci(le(1 that she would take her son to Moscow in or(ler to get him admitted to the university there. She was convinced that he had great potential. At the time, Russia was backward compared to the nations of Western Europe. However, it had one of the best educational systems on the continent. It boasted good universities and a government scholarship program (lesigne(1 to aid promising youths who might otherwise not get university educations. Maria intended to take advantage of this to secure an education for her son. He would, of course, have to pass an examination to get a scholarship. But he was a bright young man, and she had no (1oubt that he would pass.
160 THE LAST SORCERERS It wasn't an easy journey. The Trans-Siberian Railway did not yet exist. Fifteen years previously a large network of railroads had been proposed, but Russia's minister of finance, who believed that raid travel was a threat to "public morals," rejected the idea. Railroads, he sai(l,"encourage(1 frequent purposeless travel, thus fostering the rest- less spirit of our age." If. PETER$BURG In the absence of railroads, mother and son hitchhiked the 1,300 miles to Moscow. When they arrived, it appeared at first that their journey had been in vain. The University of Moscow had a quota system for admitting students from the provinces, and Siberia had not yet been given a quota. Thus Mendeleev could not take the examinations for a scholarship, or even apply to enter the university. But Maria Mendeleev didn't even consider returning to Siberia. Instead, she set off with her son, and a (laughter, on the 400-mile journey to St. Petersburg. Shortly after arriving she discovered that the director of the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, a college that trained teachers, was Ivan Pletnov, an old friend of her late husband. Pletnov allowed Mendeleev to apply for admission to the Institute and to take the scholarship examina- tions, which he passed. As a scholarship student, Mendeleev lived at the Institute, which provided room, board, books, and school uni- forms. When he graduated he would be required to teach for eight years. However this did not seem an onerous requirement. Men(leleev stu(lie(1 mathematics, physics, and chemistry at the Institute. Shortly after he was admitted, his mother died. A year later his sister Liza, who had accompanied them to St. Petersburg, died also. But Mendeleev continued to work hard at his studies, graduated first in his class in 1855, and was awar(le(1 a gold me(lal. However, as was the custom, the examiners praised not Mendeleev but his chemistry professor A. A.Voskresenski, for having pro(luce(1 such a fine pupil. At this time, Men(leleev was not in goo(1 health. He was coughing blood, and the physician at the Institute hospital diagnosed tuber-
THE PERIODIC LAW 161 culosis, giving Mendeleev six months to live. The doctor thought, however, that a warmer climate might delay the progress of the disease, so the Institute authorities arranged a teaching post for Mendeleev at Simferopol in the Crimea. He arrived in Simferopol only to discover that he didn't have a job after all. The Crimean War was raging. Simferopo] had been turned into a kind of military camp, and the school at which he was to have taught was closed. However, the town officials gave him a month's salary. There was no reason for Mendeleev to stay in Simferopol, so he set off for Odessa, a large city in the Ukraine, located on the Black Sea. There he consulted Dr. Nicolai Pirogov, who had formerly been a physician at the Pedagogical Institute. Pirogov discovered that Men(leleev (li(ln't have tuberculosis at all. According to Pirogov, the coughing of bloo(1 had been caused by a "valvular (lefect" in Mendeleev's heart. Mendeleev might cough blood again in the future, Pirogov said, but there was no reason why he shouldn't live well into old age. Mendeleev soon got a post teaching mathematics and physics at an Odessa high school. Granted permission to use the library and laboratory at Novorossisk University, he launched into research for his master's thesis. By May of 1856 he had completed a first draft. He revised it during the summer and was awarded a master of physics and chemistry (1egree by the University of St. Petersburg in September. STUDIES IN EUROPE Six weeks later the 22-year-old Mendeleev won an appointment at the university as a privat-4ocent, a kind of unsalaried assistant professor who received part of the fees paid by his students. During the mid-nineteenth century, Russia was somewhat backward scien- tifically, so Mendeleev had no contact with leading chemists. How- ever, in 1859 he got a government grant to pursue further studies in France and Germany. On the advice of his frien(l, the chemist and composer Alexsan(lr Boro(lin, he went first to Paris, where he stu(lie
162 THE LAST SORCERERS with Henri Regnault, the noted French chemist and physicist. Then he went to Heidelberg where he worked in the laboratory of Bunsen and Kirchhoff. Kirchhoff and Bunsen's laboratory was an important center of scientific activity. This should have made it an ideal place for a young scientist to work. However, Mendeleev did not get along well with Bunsen, who supervised his experimental work. Mendeleev wanted to pursue some ideas of his own, while Bunsen expected him to perform the assignments that were given him. One day Mendeleev's frustration led to an outburst of anger, and he abruptly walked out. Though he continued to attend Kirchhoff's and Bunsen's lectures, he ma(le up his mind to set up his own laboratory in his lodgings. The University of Heidelberg, which had been founded in 1386, was a famous institution, and it had quite a few Russian students. It attracted Russian visitors as well. One of these was the novelist Ivan Turgenev, who might have had Mendeleev in mind when he later wrote of"a young Russian chemist living in Heidelberg who was praised by all who knew him as an uncommon talent." One of the other people Mendeleev encountered in Heidelberg was his friend Borodin, who had come to Western Europe for further study after receiving his (loctorate in chemistry in 1859. Men(leleev and Boro(lin took short trips to Italy together (luring university holi(lays, but then Men(leleev began to see less and less of his friend. Boro(lin had become enamored of a young Russian girl who was in Heidelberg for her health. The two were married on their return to Russia. In December 1860 Men(leleev atten(le(1 the congress of chemists in KarIsruhe, where he heard Cannizzaro speak and read his pamphlet. The congress took place near the end of Mendeleev's stay in Europe. Some three months later he was summoned to St. Petersburg to teach a course in organic chemistry. He was now 27 years old, and his publications in German and French scientific journals were making him known outside of Russia. However, he had not yet embarked on the research that was to make his name known throughout the world.
THE PERIODIC LAW 163 RETURN TO Ah. PETER$BURC; News traveled slowly in those days, and it wasn't until he returned to Russia that Mendeleev learned that the new Russian tsar, Alexander II, had just freed the serfs. Alexander, who had come to the throne in 1855, had been appalled by Russian defeats in the Crimean War. Seeing them as a sign of Russia's backwardness, he instituted a series of reforms designed to make Russia more like the nations of Western Europe. He vastly expanded Russia's railroad system, reformed the judicial system, set up local assemblies and village schools, reorga- nized the military, freed the serfs, and distributed land to the freed peasants. Alexander was no democrat, however, and had every inten- tion of continuing to be an autocratic ruler. In 1862 he reacted to the spread of radical doctrines by instituting repressive police measures. After an assassination attempt in 1866, the role of the secret police was increased even more. Thus the Russia that Mendeleev returned to combined liberal economic reforms with increasing political repression. Mendeleev was not very concerned with political matters at this time, however. He was far too occupied with his scientific work. He wrote a doctoral dissertation, completed a 500-page textbook on organic chemistry, and in 1862 he married. Mendeleev's older sister Olga arranged the marriage, which Mendeleev initially agreed to. However, once he began to know his future wife a little, he began to have doubts. When he conveyed his doubts to his sister, she became angry. In those days engagements were regarded very seriously, and if a man broke an engagement, he cast dishonor upon himself while doing a great wrong to his betrothed. Olga let Mendeleev know what she thought in no uncertain terms, and he went ahead with the marriage. The marriage was not a happy one. The couple argued constantly. Mendeleev's submersion in his work might also have contributed to the conflicts with his wife. In addition to lecturing at the university on organic chemistry, he taught chemistry at a military school and
164 THE LAST SORCERERS continued with his own research. Realizing that Russian scientists were unaware of the advances in chemistry that had recently been made in Europe, he translated German works on the subject. He became interested in scientific agriculture and analyzed soil samples for the Imperial Free Economics Society. In addition to all this, he somehow found the time to travel to Baku on the Caspian Sea to study the methods of producing oil in order to make recommenda- tions to the owner of a refining company. This was no light under- taking. In those days of no railroads and poor roads, it was an arduous journey, yet Men(leleev rea(lily accepted the assignment. He got his doctorate in 1865 and shortly thereafter was made a full professor at the University of St. Petersburg. He was now 31 years old. One of his students was Prince Peter Kropotkin, who was later to become a prominent anarchist leader. But Mendeleev had many other students too; as many as 200 would come to see him lecture. His popularity might have been because he taught in an informal manner, often relating anecdotes and digressing into such topics as astronomy, meteorology, geology, biology, and agronomy, even balloon naviga- tion and the use of artillery. The chemical demonstrations that Mendeleev and his assistants prepared certainly made an impression too, especially, one imagines, those that featured explosive reactions. But of course Men(leleev was much more than a showman. Real- izing that no adequate textbook of chemistry existed in Russian, he planned to write his own. At the same time, he continued to ponder a problem that had long concerned him, the fact that chemistry had no central gui(ling principle. Surely some kind of or(ler existed in the chemical elements, 63 of which were then known. There had to be some pattern. THE PERIODIC I,AW In 1867 Mendeleev began writing the first of a two-volume text, Principl/es of Chemistry. As he wrote, he found it natural to group elements with similar properties together. In the first volume, he
THE PERIODIC LAW 165 discussed the alkali metals: lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, and cesium; the halogens: fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine, and their compounds; and the very common elements: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. This raised the question of what ele- ments should be discussed first in the second volume and how they should be grouped together. This caused his thoughts to turn again to the idea of finding an ordering principle that would show how the elements were related to one another. Mendeleev tackled the problem by making up a card for each of the 63 known elements. On each he wrote the atomic weight of the element and listed its most significant properties. In order to get the most accurate atomic weights available, he wrote to a number of chemists, asking for the figures they had obtained from their measure- ments. Thus he got information from the Belgian chemist lean Servais Stas, the French scientist Tean-Baptiste Dumas, the English scientist Sir William Crookes, the Swedish chemist Kruss Nilson, and a professor at Prague University, Bohuslav Brauner. Mendeleev wrote the weights on his cards as he received them. Then he verified as many as he could with his own experiments. Finally, he arranged the cards in order of atomic weight, beginning with hydrogen, the lightest element and en(ling with uranium, the heaviest then known. On each card he also noted the chemical properties of the element and certain of its physical properties, such as melting point, (lensity, and malleability. Then he pore(1 over the car(ls for (lays, looking for patterns. Finally he pinned the car(ls on a wall, putting similar elements in horizontal rows. He looked at the table that this formed, made changes, and pinned the cards on the wall again. Mendeleev arranged the elements into seven groups. Lithium (atomic weight 7) was followed by beryllium (9), boron (11), carbon (12), nitrogen (14), oxygen (16), and fluorine (19~. The next element in order of atomic weight was sodium (23), which had properties similar to those of lithium. Therefore, Mendeleev pinned the card for sodium under that for lithium. Six more cards were placed in the second row, ending with chlorine under fluorine. He continued in
166 THE LAST SORCERERS the same manner until all 63 cards were placed. When he finished, he noticed something very striking, that the properties of these elements "were periodic functions of their atomic weights." In other words, the same kinds of properties were observed after every seven elements. There were some problems with the classification, however. At the time, the atomic weight of beryllium was thought to be 14. If this weight was used, it had to be placed in a group with nitrogen and phosphorus, which had very different properties. Mendeleev boldly concluded that this atomic weight was incorrect. He gave beryllium a weight of 9 instead. This brought it into the magnesium family, where it seemed to belong. Then Mendeleev looked at tellurium, which was supposed to have an atomic weight of 128. That had to be wrong, too. But if it had a weight between 123 and 126, everything would work beautifully; it would then fall into the right group. He made even more dramatic changes in the weights of some elements. For example, at the time uranium was thought to have an atomic weight of 120. This didn't fit into Mendeleev's scheme at all, so he boldly doubled the figure, making it 240 (this is very close to the modern figure, which is 238~. He made other changes too. For example, he switched the places of gold and platinum. He had to if his system was to work. He felt fully justified in doing this. It was inconceivable that the appearance of such marvelous order was an illusion. Men(leleev observed that there were some gaps in his table, empty spaces to which no element was assigned. He concluded that these represented elements that had not yet been discovered. For example, there was a gap under boron, so Mendeleev concluded that it must be an unknown element with properties like boron. He named it eka- boron ("eka" is Sanskrit for the numeral one). Similarly, there were gaps under aluminum and silicon. Mendeleev called these missing elements eke-aluminum and eke-silicon. The positions of the miss- ing elements in his table allowed him to estimate their atomic weights and also to (1escribe their chemical and physical properties accurately. In 1869 Men(leleev's paper on the periodic law,"On the Relation of the Properties to the Atomic Weights of the Elements," was read
THE PERIODIC LAW 167 before the Russian Chemical Society. Mendeleev was id at the time and couldn't appear at the Society in person, so a colleague, Nicolai Menshutkin, read the paper. There was little response. If Mendeleev had read it in person, there would have been a question-and-answer period, and he could have cleared up points that puzzled the audience. This might have evoked some interest. However Menshutkin didn't fully understand the paper he had read, and a discussion wasn't possible. Mendeleev's paper did not evoke much interest either when it was published two months later in the journal of the Chemical Society. However, matters were different when Mendeleev published another paper, "The Natural System of the Elements," two years later. This paper, which contained a revised periodic table (Mendeleev now listed elements in vertical columns rather than horizontal rows), had a much greater response. Russian chemists read it with great interest, as did foreign chemists when the paper was translated into German the same year. Mendeleev was not alone in making this discovery. In Germany Lothar Meyer discovered the periodic law independently. However, Mendeleev published first and thus had priority. Furthermore, Meyer made no attempt to predict the properties of unknown elements as Mendeleev did. Thus Mendeleev is generally given sole credit for the liscovery. A PREDICTION CONFIRMED In 1875 the French chemist Emil Lecoq de Boisbau~ron discovered Men(leleev's eke-aluminum and named it gallium after the ancient name for France (the right to name an element is the discoverer's even if its existence has already been predicted). When Mendeleev heard of the discovery, he naturally announced that his prediction was confirmed. Lecoq (lisagree(l. Men(leleev had pre(licte(1 an element with a (lensity of 5.94 (that is, 5.94 times heavier than water) while his element had a density of 4.7. However, when a second
168 THE LAST SORCERERS determination of the density was made, it was discovered that Lecoq's first result was in error. The actual density of gallium turned out to be 5.91, very close to Mendeleev's prediction. The discovery of gallium was followed by the discovery of scan- dium (Mendeleev's eke-boron) in 1879 and of germanium (eka-sili- con) in 1886. The new elements had the approximate atomic weights and properties that Mendeleev had predicted. The scientific world was astonished. It is probably safe to say that before Mendeleev's predic- tions were confirmed, no chemist would have believed that the prop- erties of unknown elements could be predicted with such accuracy. SEPARATION At about the same time that Mendeleev's predictions began to be con- firmed, his relationship with his wife, Feozva, reached a low point. Because both found the situation unbearable, they decided to separate. It was agreed that Feozva would live on the couple's country estate during the academic year when Mendeleev was in St. Petersburg and that she would live in St. Petersburg when he lived on the estate dur- ing the summers. The couple's two children would stay with their mother. However happy Men(leleev might have been to separate from his wife, he undoubtedly missed his son and daughter. However, it is unlikely that he spent a great deal of time thinking about the matter. He kept as busy as always, and in 1876 the Russian government sent him to stu(ly oil-(lrilling practices in Pennsylvania. The first commer- cial of] wed had been drilled there in 1859, and it was hoped that Mendeleev could use what he learned to make recommendations about the (levelopment of Russian of] fields. While he was in Pennsylvania, Mendeleev visited refineries, inter- viewe(1 people who worked in the local oil industry, and stu(lie(1 the rock formations in regions where of] was found. Thus in Russia, Mendeleev is remembered not only as a chemist, but also as the father of the Russian oil industry, and justifiably so, because he contributed
THE PERIODIC LAW 169 more than anyone else to the development of Russian oil production. On his return to Russia he invented a new method of refining and tested it under factory conditions. He went to southern Russia to study the oil-bearing land there and wrote a book titled The Petrol/eum Industry in Pennsylvania and the Caucasus. When Mendeleev traveled around Russia, he didn't do so in the style that most government appointees would have demanded. Instead, he bought third-cIass tickets so that he could converse with the common people. He learned of their bitter feelings about the repressive Russian government. And these were ordinary people, not political revolutionaries like the exiles he had known in Siberia. From time to time, he denounced the abuses of the Russian bureaucracy. For most people this would have been dangerous, but Mendeleev was Russia's most famous scientist, and there would have been very vociferous protests if he was arrested or taken away by the secret police. Furthermore, he advocated liberal, not revolutionary, ideas. He believed in the possibility of reform and never advocated over- throwing the monarchy. So the tsarist government employed the strategy of sen(ling him away on some government mission when- ever his complaints caused too much embarrassment. Mendeleev did not share the attitudes toward women that were common in his day. He didn't believe that women were fully the intellectual equals of men, but he thought that men and women should be treated equally in the workplace and that women should have the same educational opportunities as men. Consequently he admitted women to his lectures at the university, something that was almost unheard of in his day. His liberalism ma(le him some enemies but because of his stature they were unable to do him much harm. In 1880 the Imperial Academy of Sciences refused to elect Men(leleev to membership, electing instead Frie(lrich Beilstein, a German professor at the Impe- rial Technological Institute. But the University of Moscow soon made him an honorary member, possibly in response to the Imperial Aca(lemy's action. Men(leleev seems not to have been bothered by the
170 THE LAST SORCERERS snub. In any case, he soon had honors enough, receiving the Davy medal from England's Royal Society and the Faraday medal from the English Chemical Society. When Mendeleev came to England to receive these honors, the English called him"Faust"; he was the magician who had predicted the properties of elements that no one had ever seen. He received numerous other honors also, including awards and honorary degrees from the German and American chemical societies and from the universities of Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, and Gottingen. MENDELEEV1HE BlGAMI$T In 1887 Mendeleev's sister Ekaterina came to St. Petersburg to keep house for him. She brought her children with her and also a 19-year- old girl, Anna Ivanova Popov, who studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Art with Ekaterina's daughter. At first Mendeleev saw little of either Ekaterina or Anna. The part of the apartment that contained Mendeleev's bedroom and study had a private entrance. Normally he didn't see any of the other occupants of his apartment except when Ekaterina brought him his meals. However he soon began to catch glimpses of an attractive young woman. Before long he found himself becoming infatuated with her. Naturally this pre- sented difficulties. After all, he was still married. Mendeleev married Anna in 1882 after divorcing his wife. Russian law prohibited remarriage for seven years after a divorce. But Mendeleev paid an Orthodox priest, who was later defrocked, to give him a dispensation. When a member of the tsar's court remarked on Men(leleev's bigamy, the tsar is supposed to have replie(l,"I admit Mendeleev has two wives, but I have only one Mendeleev." Men(leleev's con(luct was subsequently ignored. The marriage was happy, and being married to Anna changed the character of Mendeleev's life. He had previously spent most of his time alone. Now, twice a week, he and Anna held informal parties. The guests were artists, musicians, and scientists. Men(leleev became
THE PERIODIC LAW 171 interested in art, and he even wrote an article about a painting for a newspaper. In 1894 the Academy of Art elected him to membership. Ironically, he had gained admission to the Academy of Art but not to the Academy of Sciences. PROTE$T When Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, Alexander III, who suc- ceeded him, continued his father's harsh policies. In some respects the son's government became more oppressive than his father's. This was certainly true in the case of education. Count I. D. Delyanov, who was appointed minister of education, lowered the quota for Jewish students, so that many of them could not obtain any education above the elementary level. Opposed to education for women, he closed the Women's Medical College, an institution founded by Borodin. Wishing to deny higher education to the "children of coachmen, foot- men, laundresses and small shopkeepers," Delyanov eliminated many of the government scholarships like the one that had allowed Mendeleev to obtain an education, and he raised tuition fees. In (lefiance of the government, Men(leleev continued to admit women to his lectures. Again he was left alone. Thinking of himself as "an evolutionist of a peaceful type," he did not sympathize with the revo- Jutionary ideas of some of his students. Nevertheless, he used his influence to help them when they got into trouble. One (lay in March 1890 Men(leleev encountered a large student demonstration as he left the university. The students were agitating for the reversal of Delyanov's edicts. Later that day, one of his chemistry students came to his apartment and asked him to come to a student meeting that was to be held at a later (late. Men(leleev went. The main order of business was the reading of a petition that a student com- mittee had prepared. It was imme(liately accepted. But this raised the question of who should take the petition to Delyanov. If a student did this, Delyanov was likely to throw it into a wastebasket without read- ing it so Men(leleev was asked to present the petition. He agreed.
172 THE LAST SORCERERS Mendeleev took the petition to Delyanov's office two days later. Some time after that a messenger brought the unopened envelope back. The unread petition was accompanied by a message that read: "On the instruction of the Minister of Education, the enclosed docu- ment is returned to Councilor of State Professor Mendeleev, since neither the Minister nor anyone else in the service of His Imperial Majesty has the right to accept a document of this nature." Mendeleev was furious. The next day he submitted his resignation to the univer- sity. Neither his colleagues nor the rector were able to persuade him to reconsider nor was he swayed by his students' pleas. Mendeleev gave his last lecture on March 22. Mendeleev and Anna had to find a new apartment, because the university provided the one they were living in. When they had moved in, Men(leleev set up a laboratory in one of the rooms. This allowe him to continue to perform experiments and to submit papers to scientific journals. Although Mendeleev's resignation was an act of political protest, the Russian government continued to consult him on various matters. He was far too valuable a resource to be ignored. For example, like Lavoisier, he was put to work improving gunpowder. Receiving a commission from the Russian admiralty to improve the smokeless powder that was then in use, Mendeleev set to work at once and within a year he produced a product that was superior to most foreign powders. BUREAU OF WHICH AND MEASURES In 1893 the Russian minister of finance, who was familiar with Men(leleev's contributions to Russian industry, offere(1 him the post of (Erector of the Russian Bureau of Weights an(1 Measures. Mendeleev accepted, and he and his family (he and Anna now had several children) moved once again, to an apartment in one of the bureau's buildings. Mendeleev launched into the job with enthusiasm.
THE PERIODIC LAW 173 Determined to bring order to the chaotic systems of measurement then used in Russia, he used techniques developed abroad and invented some measuring devices himself. He established the metric system in Russia and insisted on a greater precision in measuring equipment. When Mendeleev discovered that his employees had been given substandard housing, he badgered government officials until new apartments were built for them. He employed women as well as men in the Bureau and found that some of the women did work that was superior to that of their male counterparts. In 1899 the Russian government asked Mendeleev to go to the Urals to study the iron industry. He remained there until he had enough material for an 866-page book, The Iron Industry of the Ural/s in the Year 1899. In 1902 he revised his periodic table, adding a new column for the newly discovered inert gasses (helium, argon, krypton, and xenon). He also became a map maker, producing a large map of Russia that was more accurate than any that preceded it. Though he was now nearly 70, it seemed that Mendeleev had more energy than ever. In 1902 Mendeleev was forced to take a short rest from his labors. Like his father, he developed cataracts and had to have them operated _, --- A- ---r ~ upon. His eyes were bandaged for two weeks. When the bandages came offend he found that his vision had improved, he plunged back into his work. REVOLUTION In January 1905 St. Petersburg experienced a series of strikes, and the organization that had fomented some of them, the Assembly of Russian Workingmen, decided to present a request for reforms to Tsar Nicholas II. The Assembly's leader, a monk named Georgy Capon, arranged a demonstration before the tsar's winter palace. But the tsar was away at the time, and matters fell into the hands of his uncle,
174 THE LAST SORCERERS Grand Duke VIadimir. Though it was a peaceful demonstration, the duke ordered the police to open fire on the demonstrators. More than a hundred were killed and hundreds of others were wounded. The massacre was followed by general strikes in St. Petersburg and other cities and by peasant uprisings. Military units, including army units stationed along the Trans-Siberian Railroad, also joined the revolt. Nicholas attempted to quell the revolt by announcing the formation of an elected assembly to serve in an advisory capacity to the government. But when election procedures were announced in August, there was even more protest, and a railroad strike that began in October incited general strikes in most of the large cities. But in the end, the revolution failed. The government arrested most of the revolutionary lea(lers, and the military suppressed revolts in Georgia, in the provinces bordering the Baltic Sea, and in Poland. The govern- ment regained control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and quelled revolt in rebellious army units. Although the revolution failed to overthrow the tsarist govern- ment and set up a democratic state in its place, some of its goals were achieved. The government felt compelled to institute numerous reforms, and it created a legislative body, the Duma. The hope cherished by Men(leleev and other liberals that change could be brought about by peaceful evolution had been dashed. However it did appear that Russia was beginning to evolve into a democracy. Mendeleev died too soon to witness the far more violent revolu- tion in 1917. In the fall of 1906 he fell ill. He was diagnosed with influenza, and he went to Cannes in southern France to recuperate. At first he seemed to have recovered, but symptoms of his illness be- gan to reappear after he returned to Russia. Matters became worse in January 1907 when he contracted pneumonia, and during the early hours of January 20 he died. Mendeleev was buried in the Volkovo Cemetery on January 25. His funeral was attended by thousands, including some students carrying a large tablet on which the periodic table was inscribed. That night the streetlights of St. Petersburg were draped with black crepe.
THE PERIODIC LAW 175 In 1955 Albert Ghiorso and his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley discovered the artificial element mendelevium. The scientists produced mendelevium one atom at a time, getting 17 atoms in all. Mendelevium was added to the periodic table as element number 101.
