to Tverskaya province. After having read the letter rapidly, he put the letter aside and kept comparing the different variants of comparing the elements of the natural groups according to their atomic weights. The papers cut into cards finished. A group of columns and lines, which became the starting point of the development of the table “The experience of the system of elements, based on their atomic weights and chemical resemblance”, appeared on the back side of the received letter. During the day Mendeleyev was working over the compilation of “The experience of the system of elements…” In the evening he sent a clean copy of the table to the press having made the notes for the typesetters and having written the date “February, 17th of 1869.”
There is a version that Mendeleyev saw “the system of elements” in his dream. He got up from a joyful excitement and wrote rapidly the table on a piece of paper. That’s all. The scientist compiled a clear and harmonious building of the periodical system from the chaos of separate indigested chemical elements.
Dmitry Ivanovich utterly disliked talking with the strangers “about personal, subjective part of his feelings, about the preparatory period, when the ideas had been formulating and confidence that he had reached the one of the deepest mysteries of nature had been composed little by little.” However, according to the testimonies of Ivan, his son in a second marriage, the scientist used to say that the year of 1860 had become for him the “determinative moment” in the establishment of the periodical system – the congress of chemists in Carlsruhe. And more specifically – the ideas expressed by Italian chemist S. Cannizzaro. D. I. Mendeleyev said, “I consider him to be my real forerunner, because the atomic weights defined by him gave me the necessary point of support.”
In August of 1869, at the Second congress of Russian naturalists the scientist made a report “About the atomic volume of the simple substances”, where he offered a short form of the table. Only In, the rare earth elements and several heavy ones: Au, Hg, Te, Bi, Th, U, didn’t get any place there or were located incorrectly. The scientist kept working at the allocation of these elements.
D. I. Mendeleyev was writing about the 1870’s, “This was a transitional time for me: many things had been changing in me then; I used to read a lot about religions, sects, philosophy and economical articles then.”
At that time the aggressive extremist forces of the society livened up. Mendeleyev showed himself as an active public figure, longing for contributing to the salvation of the social problems of the country. Regarding it the article of the scientist, which had been written by him for the newspaper “Voice” in connection with the appeal of the government to Russian people calling for help in the struggle with extremism, but hadn’t been published, is deserving attention. It was called “Response to the call.” The scientist disputes against the “secret arrangements” of the government – secret investigations, prohibitions to read the “rebellious” literature, etc.
The growth of interest of the scientist to history, philosophy and literature contemporizes with the growth of activity in the socio-political sphere. However, Mendeleyev’s “disposition to painting was coming out clearer than anything else.” According to the testimonies of the contemporaries, he was “not a bad graphic artist.” The Wanderers appeared to be closer to Dmitry Ivanovich than other different art schools. Namely their creativity corresponded with his realistic cast of mind.
Mendeleyev enjoyed travelling very much. During his foreign trips he had studied the main art galleries of the world. It becomes evident at the sight of his photograph albums and engravings. He didn’t miss any art exhibition in Russia. The albums, made by Dmitry Ivanovich during the exhibitions of the painters-Wanderers, are of a special interest. Thus, for instance, in the archive of the scientist there was kept an album of photocopies mainly from the 6th exhibition of 1878.
Since 1878 meetings of painters and scientists, which were named later the “Mendeleyev’s Wednesdays”, started taking place at Mendeleyev’s apartment: “There were constantly present all the Wanderers – Kramskoy, Repin, Yaroshenko, Myasoedov, Kuznetsov, Savitzky, Vl. Makovsky, P. K. Klodt, Maksimov, the Vasnetsovs, Surikov, Shishkin, Quindji, Kiselev, Ostrouhov, Volkov, Pozen, Lemoch, Prahov and Mihaltseva. Among the University professors there were more often than others Beketov, Menshutkin, Petrushevsky, Inostrantsev, Wagner, Voyeikov and Kraevich… They came to the “Wednesdays” without any special invitations.”
The “Wednesdays” were the continuation of those scientists’ meetings, the organization of which had been done by Dmitry Ivanovich during the previous years. Partly the establishment of the Association of the mobile exhibitions became an impulse for organizing the “Wednesdays.”
The scientist was interested in photography and took the most active part in organizing the photographic reproduction of the paintings and in developing the corresponding equipment. At the end of the 1870’s together with some painters and amateurs in photography he organized a group, the goal of which was the “use of photography in spreading the works of Russian art.” The group, which had been gathering at Mendeleyev’s apartment, joined the well-known Russian photographers: S. and L. Levitskies, V. Karrik, the inventor L. Varnerke, the young scientist V. I. Sreznevsky, etc. Namely here the idea of establishing in Petersburg the society of photography was born.
Except photographs and engravings, Dmitry Ivanovich was gathering valuable collections of art originals: drawings of Bruni, Ivanov, Fedotov, Repin, Quindji, Yaroshenko and Shishkin.
The painting of Quindji “Night at the Dnieper” not only made a great impression upon Mendeleyev, but also made him think about the questions of the theory of art. On November, 13th of 1900 in the 314th issue of the “Voice” was published his small article “Before the painting of Quindji.”
Mendeleyev wrote about a certain parallelism of the development of nature sciences and of the interest of artists for scenery: “They started studying nature, the natural science, which hadn’t been known in the ancient times and during the era of the Renaissance, was born… The nature became not a slave, a frame, but a helpmate, equal with man, a wife for a husband… The inductive, experimental sciences using the knowledge of external and internal, reconciling the kingly metaphysics and mathematics with the humble observation and with a request for an answer to the nature, became the crown of knowledge… At the same time with this change in the system of knowledge – if not earlier – the scenery was born.”
Making suitcases and frames for the portraits was another passion of Dmitry Mendeleyev, which became surrounded by legends and rumours. Mendeleyev always bought the materials for the work at Gostiny Dvor. Once, while choosing the necessary goods, he heard somebody asking behind his back: “Who is this respectable gentleman?” And the answer of the clerk: “It is necessary to know such people. This is Mendeleyev, a suitcase-maker.” In general, Mendeleyev liked to paste. It was a rest for him as well as patience or chess. He pasted very neatly and accurately, he sticked on the collections of photographs and engravings of Russian and foreign famous pictures, collected by him, he pasted cases for the albums and brochures, boxes, caskets, small travelling cases. His niece N. Y. Kapustina-Gubkina kept a folding traveling chess-board, made by Dmitry Ivanovich. The pasteboard figures were set into the special squares and they couldn’t fall out of them on no jolting on the road. In 1895 Dmitry Ivanovich couldn’t read and write after having had an operation of the cataract ablation: he had been read the papers aloud, he had been dictating the instructions to his secretary. And till his eyesight hadn’t come back once and for all, Mendeleyev devoted his spare time to this passion, having presented all his friends with suitcases, boxes and caskets.
Mendeleyev paid pretty much attention to the scientific research of spiritualism. He studied the phenomena, happening during the spiritualistic sessions, as a scientist and pedagogue, as far as the passion for spiritualism by many professors of the University could have influenced the student youth. He suggested to establish the special commission for studying the spiritualistic phenomena, attached to the
