on February 8,1834.
He was the youngest of the 14 children . His father was the principal of a gymnasium ( a school where there is not only body development but there is also the development of the mind). His mother was very smart and self-educated . She used her brothers stuff who went to a university.
In 1847 his father became blind of the cataracts on his eyes and was forced to retire. In order to support this very large family his mother opened a glass factory , but pretty soon the factory burned down in 1848 shortly after his father died. His family had to walk about 1000 miles to Moscow in order to get Dmitry into the University . He was not accepted . He and his then walked to St. Petersburg where he did get into the institute of pedagogy.
In 1860 his mother died at the age of 59 , this was four years after he graduated the institute as science and math teacher. He would work in the Crimea until war . In 1856 he returned to the St. Petersburg in 1856 and finished his MS degree at the St.
Petersburg University. ?In 1869 he received a government grant to go get his Ph. D. in Paris with the Physicist Renault? .
On the way to Paris he stopped in Poland somewhere near Cracow in order to visit the salt mines. While in the salt mines was the place where his first ideas start to develop. Why should KCl, NaCl, and NaBr look and behave alike. In Paris he work was mainly focused on thethermal expansion of the liquids and a year later he went to the Heidelberg where he became good friends with Borodin . Also worked with Bunsen ( the father of photochemistry).
They dislike each other greatly . When he returned to St. Petersburg in 1861 after completing his Ph. D.
and became a professorat the Technical Institute at the age of 27. In 1863 he married one of his sister’s friend largely because of the influence from his sister. He did to really love each other ,but they had two children and mostly lived apart Mendeleev’s motherThis picture shows Mendeleev and his wife attending some science convention in St.PetersburgBibliography1) Encyclopedia Britannica on-line at www.eb.com:180 Search query :Mendeleev2) www.cis.lead.org/MUCT/Mendeleyev.html
