was a legend in the family that one of the ancestors had got married for love an Orient beauty. He loved her so much that, when she had passed away, he died of grief. The niece of D. I. Mendeleyev Nadezhda Yakovlevna Kapustina-Gubkina wrote, “… A stream of the Mongolian race’s blood got into the clear Great Russian blood of Kornilyevs, and several descendants of it even have something oriental in their type…”
The clan of Kornilyevs was proud of the fact that they were the first who started to establish factories in Siberia: papery and crystal. In 1787 they established the first typography in Tobolsk and since 1789 they started editing the first newspaper in Siberia “Irtysh”, they printed books.
The big family of Mendeleyevs started living well. The nanny from serf peasants Paraskovya Pheraphontovna, who stayed in the family of Mendeleyevs till her very death, helped to look after the elder children. The father of Maria Dmitrievna, Dmitry Vasilyevich Kornilyev, also lived with them. Already in youth he was ill with a brain fever and he couldn’t work any more. Later D. I. Mendeleyev’s sister Ekaterina Kapustina remembered about the beloved grandfather like that: he was a grey-haired, thin and short old man. He was quiet, kind, imperturbable and lead calm and idle life. Every day he went to the mass, then he used to read in his room, he wrote prose and rhymes – in general, “what he liked.” Dmitry Vasilyevich always used to pray in the evening. And after prayer before going to bed, when everything around became silent, he walked around the house with a candle: he watched whether the windows and the doors were closed. Then he went to the porch and watched whether the attic, inner porch and larders were locked.
Ekaterina Ivanovna wrote, “Remembrance about grandfather is always connected for me with a kind, comforting feeling, as we remembered him, he was never able to offend anyone and endured everything resignedly.
Next to the remembrance about the holy old man I want to tell about his grandson, i. e. about my brother Dmitry Ivanovich. This is my dear brother, the pride and comfort of our family. My heart is full of gratitude to him for his concern for me and my children at anytime…”
Mitenka, loved by everyone, was born on January, 27th (February, 8th) of 1834. This year was a hard one for the family. Ivan Pavlovich had to retire since he had become almost blind. The family had to live on his small pension. The Mendeleyevs moved from Tobolsk to the village of Aremzyanka, where the glass-work, which was inherited by the brother of Maria Dmitrievna Vasiliy Kornilyev, was situated. Maria Dmitrievna got a letter of attorney to manage it.
Dmitry spent his childhood and early youth in the village, among peasants and mill-hands. The problems of manufacturing and agriculture were constantly discussed at the Mendeleyevs. Mother, Maria Dmitrievna, worked tirelessly. She wrote, “My day starts at six o’clock in the morning with the preparation of dough and pastry for rolls and pies, then with the preparation of meal and at the same time with personal orders for the business. Moreover, I walk to the kitchen table, then to the bureau and during the days of payments – right from the cooking to the accounts.” Ivan Pavlovich worked as long as possible. In such an atmosphere Mitya got a respect to labour, interest to the industrial work and agriculture, which remained in him for the rest of his life.
Mitya learned to read, write and count very early. He grew being a bright child. His sister Ekaterina Kapustina liked to tell about the mother wit of her younger brother like that. When she was already married and lived in Omsk, mother with a 6-year-old Mitya visited them sometimes. While entertaining the child Ekaterina Ivanovna played with him a card game, which had been popular then, “tintere” and “sticks”, where the counting played the main role. Little Mitya always defeated his grown-up sister.
When he was 7 years old, he was already prepared to enter gymnasium together with his elder brother Pavel. Mitya studied at gymnasium without any especial progress, treating bona fide only those subjects, which he liked and which didn’t require intensive work. He liked mathematics, physics and history. He was absolutely indifferent towards the Russian philology and religion. He couldn’t stand foreign languages – German and Latin, and only the threat of remaining in the same form for the second year made him study.
The last years of Mitya Mendeleyev’s studies at gymnasium were saddened by misfortunes. In October of 1847 his father Ivan Pavlovich died, three months later one of his sisters Polina – died. In June of 1848 the glass-work in Aremzyanka, which had been for a while the main source of the family’s subsistence, burned down entirely. Maria Dmitrievna had no choice but to liquidate the farm and to leave the native places forever.
The Mendeleyevs passed winter of the 1849–1850’s in Moscow with the brother of Maria Dmitrievna, and in spring of 1850 they went to Petersburg cherishing hopes that Dmitry would be able to enter one of the academies of the capital. They chose the Main Pedagogical Institute (MPI), where Dmitry’s father had studied. The institute was located in the same building with the University, in the building of the Twelve Collegia. It didn’t enjoy wide popularity because of its specialization, but the education here was of the highest level: the professors of the University and academicians were teaching here.
However, the year 1850 wasn’t for entrance. Mother had to do everything in her power so that her son would have been admitted to the entrance examinations; institute friends of Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleyev, who lived in Petersburg, helped her. At the end of summer of 1850 Mitya Mendeleyev was admitted to the physico-mathematical faculty of the Main Pedagogical Institute as a student “at the state expense”. In autumn of the same year, as if having fulfilled her main mission, Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleyeva died. Before death she willed: “… to insist in labour and not in words and to look for God’s and scientific truth patiently…”
Nadezhda Yakovlevna Kapustina-Gubkina wrote in her notes about the Mendeleyevs that Maria Dmitrievna loved all her children, but most of all the youngest. Before death she blessed her son with the icon of the God-mother, where was the following inscription:
“I’m blessing you, Mitinka. All expectancies of my old age were based on you. I forgive you all your mistakes and beg you to address to God. Be kind, honour God, Tsar, Motherland and don’t forget that you should be responsible for everything at the Trial. Forgive and remember your mother, who had loved you more than anyone.”
Many years later, in 1887, being already a well-known scientist, D. I. Mendeleyev dedicated his work “Research of aqueous solutions according to the specific gravity” to his mother: “This research is dedicated to the memory of my mother by her last-born. She was able to nurture him only by her labour, managing the factorial affairs; she educated with her example, corrected with love and moved from Siberia, spending the last might and means, in order to devote to science.”
Student Mendeleyev didn’t have any unloved subjects. Most of all he was keen on abstract mathematics; he paid a great attention to chemistry and physics. But also he studied zoology, botany, he was interested in the sciences, which were studied at the historico-philosophical faculty, he studied at the laboratory of electrotype. Mendeleyev proved to be a many-sided, extraordinarily capable and originally thinking researcher. Intensive work let him enter quickly the number of the best students of institute. When he was a student in his elder year Dmitry Mendeleyev chose for himself two main directions of research: chemistry and mineralogy.
After having graduated the MPI, Mendeleyev presented his dissertation, which was named “Isomorphism in connection with other relations of crystal form to the composition.” Isomorphism is an identity of crystal form under the difference in the solution. This phenomenon is extraordinarily widespread in the minerals. The work, made under the direction of professor A. A. Voskresensky, was of great importance for the future development of scientific interests of the young scientist. At the end of his life he wrote, “In the Main Pedagogical Institute it was required to write a dissertation on one’s own subject – I have chosen isomorphism because I was interested in the things, which I had discovered by myself… and the subject seemed to me to be important in natural historical sense… The compiling
