848 DMITRI IVANOVITSCH MENDELEEFF. 



DMITRI IVANOVITSCH MENDELEEFF (1834-1907) 



Foreign Honorary Member in Class I, Section '6, 1889. 



"Strecker, De Chancourtois, and Newlands stood foremost in the 

 way towards the discovery of the periodic law, and. . .they merely 

 wanted the boldness to place the whole question at such a height that 

 its reflection on the facts could be clearly seen." 



Mendeleeff's Faraday Lecture. 



In such modest fashion this distinguished Foreign Honorary Mem- 

 ber of the American iVcademy of Arts and Sciences characterized his 

 greatest contribution to the sum of human knowledge. 



Dmitri Ivanovitsch Mendeleeff, the youngest of fourteen children^ 

 was born to his parents, Ivan Pavlovitsch and Maria Dmitrievna, in 

 Tobolsk, Siberia, on January 27th, (O. S.) 1834. His father, the 

 Director of the College at Tobolsk, was a man of social preeminence 

 and splendid education. It is his mother, however, who in greater 

 measure excites our wonder and admiration. Under a regime which 

 gave little opportunity for the higher education of women, she began 

 to acquire the knowledge which she craved by repeating the lessons of 

 her brother Vassili. " Books are the best friends of my life," she later 

 assures us, " and it would be hard for me to exist only for the needs 

 of the body, and to have no moments free for the heart, the mind, 

 and the soul." Nor were her abilities limited to things intellectual, 

 for when her husband lost his eyesight, and was compelled to resign, 

 she administered with success and profit her brother's glass factory, 

 and thus secured the means to bring up Ker numerous children. 



Enrolled in the Gymnasium at Tobolsk at the early age of seven, 

 Dmitri became deeply interested in science and mathematics. But he 

 incurred the displeasure of his masters because of his distaste for 

 languages, especially Latin — indeed he was always an inveterate 

 foe of classicism in education. The closing years of his course brought 

 with them his father's death, and the destruction of the glass factory 

 by fire. In 1849, his mother wound up her affairs at Tobolsk, and 

 brought her favorite son to Moscoav. She intended to make him a 

 student of medicine, but this career was closed to him when he col- 

 lapsed at the sight of a corpse. In spite of failing strength and re- 

 sources, she struggled on to St. Petersburg, where he was at last 



