Substantia. An International Journal of the History of Chemistry 3(2) Suppl. 5: 139-142, 2019 Firenze University Press www.fupress.com/substantia ISSN 2532-3997 (online) | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-195 Citation: M. V. Orna (2019) Mendeleev at Home. Substantia 3(2) Suppl. 5: 139-142. doi: 10.13128/Substantia-195 Copyright: © 2019 M. V. Orna. This is an open access, peer-reviewed article published by Firenze University Press (http://www.fupress.com/substantia) and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distri- bution, and reproduction in any medi- um, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All rel- evant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Competing Interests: The Author(s) declare(s) no conflict of interest. Mendeleev at Home1 Mary Virginia Orna ChemSource, Inc., 39 Willow Drive, New Rochelle, New York, USA E-mail: maryvirginiaorna@gmail.com Abstract. Dmitri Mendeleev was “at home” at the St. Petersburg State University for forty years. The museum set up in his former place of work/living quarters is well worth a visit. Keywords. Mendeleev Museum, Mendeleev Archives, personal effects, memorabilia, laboratory equipment. INTRODUCTION Situated along the banks of the Neva River is St. Petersburg State Univer- sity, just a short walk over the Dvortsovyy Bridge from the Hermitage Muse- um. Founded in 1724 by decree of Czar Peter the Great, the university still occupies the massive building designated by Peter as the “Twelve Colleges.” And it is here, on the street now called Mendeleevskaya liniya, that the Men- deleev Museum and Archives (Figure 1) is located. This remarkable museum was originally the apartment designated for the university’s professor of chemistry and laboratory curator. In that capac- ity, Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907) lived here with his wife, Anna Popova- Mendeleeva, during his professorial tenure from 1866 to 1890. It was here that he wrote many of his scientific papers.2 After his death in 1907 the uni- versity and the Russian Chemical Society purchased his personal library, archives, and some furniture from his widow. These effects formed the basis of the museum that was established there only four years later in 1911. 1 This essay is reprinted (with added photographs and references) with the kind permission of the Science History Institute, Philadelphia, PA, USA. https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/mag- azine/mendeleev-at-home, last accessed 12 March 2019. 2 Mendeleev was never elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences, which would have supplied the living quarters, research facilities, etc. for life. Although he was, admittedly, the most famous Russian scientist both at home and abroad, his nomination was turned down by the so-called “German Party,” which, in 1881, elected Friedrich Konrad Beilstein (1838-1906) instead. In response, the Russian Chemical Society, of which Mendeleev was one of the founders, drew up a statement that said, in part: “The indisputable value of the services of this candidate, whose equal cannot be found in Russian science, and his reputation abroad, make his rejection entirely incom- prehensible.” H. M. Leicester, J. Chem. Educ. 1948, 25, 439. 140 Mary Virginia Orna CENTRAL ATTRACTIONS The central attractions of the museum are the three rooms that were originally Mendeleev’s living room, dining room, and study. The first room contains memo- rabilia associated with his childhood and youth, as well as photographs of family members, artists, scientists, architects, and close colleagues who gathered for social- izing and conversation each Wednesday evening. (As a chemist, Mendeleev acted as an adviser to artists and 3 Translation courtesy of David Lewis, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, WI, USA architects on the composition of pigments and of build- ing materials.) The second room, which in Mendeleev’s lifetime served as a dining room, is devoted to recording Men- deleev’s life before he came to St. Petersburg University, including his study at the Main Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg from 1850 to 1855 and his work trip to Heidelberg from 1859 to 1861. Also recorded in the sec- ond room is his discovery of the periodic law in 1869. Here the visitor can view his stand-up desk (he was a very tall man for the times) and some of his monographs on a variety of subjects, such as mineralogy, isomor- phism, and specific volume. These monographs reflect Mendeleev’s early interest in connecting internal proper- ties to external form. There are also some examples from his mineral collection and the wooden models of crys- talline forms that he constructed himself. The third, and most evocative room, is Mendeleev’s reconstructed study, where everything remains as it was during the last years of his life. Here one can see, among other items, a group of photographs of Mendeleev with the discoverers of some of his “eka-elements” (elements whose future discovery Mendeleev predicted in 1869): Lars Fredrik Nilson (1840-1899), who discovered scan- dium in 1879;4 Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1838- 1912), who discovered gallium in 1875;5 and Clemens Winkler (1838-1904), who discovered germanium in 1886.6 MENDELEEV’S MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO CHEMISTRY The museum also conserves Mendeleev’s personal archives. This famous collection has as its base a catalog- ing system developed by Mendeleev himself and consists of over 35,000 titles, encompassing manuscripts, draft 4 Nilson, L. C. R. Chim. 1879, 88, 642. 5 P.-É. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, C. R. Chim. 1875, 81, 493. 6 Winkler, C., J. prakt. Chem. 1887, 36, 177. Figure 1. Plaque at the Entrance of the Mendeleev Museum and Archives. Courtesy of Jan and Mary Kochansky. It reads: “Here the great Russian chemist Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev taught, worked and lived from 1850-1890.”3 Figure 2. Mendeleev photographs and memorabilia. Photograph courtesy of Roger Rea. 141Mendeleev at Home documents, letters, telegrams, diaries, notebooks, labora- tory registers, expenditure accounts, and correspondence with Russian and foreign scientists. In addition, over 200 scientific instruments, many of them built specifically for Mendeleev, are housed here. There is also a world map that shows all the places Mendeleev visited (includ- ing northwestern Pennsylvania) as part of his scientific travels. Although Mendeleev is best remembered for his discovery of the periodic law, his other major achieve- ments were authorship of a major textbook, Principles of Figure 3. A Russian Periodic Table showing elements 104 and 105 as kurchatovium and nielsbohrium respectively. Courtesy of Mary and Jan Kochansky. Figure 4. Mendeleev’s Study. Photograph courtesy of Margaret Comaskey. Figure 5. Mendeleev’s Apparatus for Measuring Gas Densities. Pho- tograph courtesy Roger Rea. 142 Mary Virginia Orna Chemistry (which included the periodic law), his studies on the elasticity of gases, and his studies of solutions as associations, to say nothing of his far-ranging eclectic interests in a variety of other fields. A visit to this muse- um evokes an appreciation for all of his interests in one small space. If the Mendeleev aficionado’s curiosity has not been satisfied with this museum chock-full of memorabilia, a short subway ride to the Technological Institute (via line 1 or line 2) will bring him or her face to face with the famous cigar-smoking Mendeleev statue at the foot of the giant periodic table built into the wall of one of the university buildings. From the viewpoint of this explor- er, it is well worth the journey. 7 Mendeleev’s “Principles of Chemistry.” https://archive.org/details/prin- ciplesofchem00menduoft/page/n4 , last accessed 21/03/2019. Figure 6. Title Page of a 1901 American reprinting of the the Eng- lish edition of Mendeleev’s “Principles of Chemistry.”7 Figure 7. Mendeleev Monument (Ilya Ginzburg, 1930). On the wall behind is the famous giant version of the Periodic Table. The build- ing is the former Bureau of Weights and Measures where Mende- leev was Director. It now houses the Mendeleev All-Russian Insti- tute of Meteorological Research. Photograph: Mary Virginia Orna. Substantia An International Journal of the History of Chemistry Vol. 3, n. 2 Suppl. 5 - 2019 Firenze University Press Setting the Table: A Retrospective and Prospective of the Periodic Table of the Elements. Mary Virginia Orna1, Marco Fontani2 The Development of the Periodic Table and its Consequences John Emsley The Periodic Table and its Iconicity: an Essay Juergen Heinrich Maar1, Alexander Maar2 Discovering Elements in a Scandinavian Context: Berzelius’s Lärbok i Kemien and the Order of the Chemical Substances Ferdinando Abbri Mendeleev’s “Family:” The Actinides Mary Virginia Orna1, Marco Fontani2 Controversial Elements: Priority Disputes and the Discovery of Chemical Elements Helge Kragh Carl Auer von Welsbach (1858-1929) - A famous Austrian chemist whose services have been forgotten for modern physics Gerd Löffler A Book Collector’s View of the Periodic Table: Key Documents before Mendeleev’s Contributions of 1869 Gregory S. Girolami A Brief History of Early Silica Glass: Impact on Science and Society Seth C. Rasmussen Mendeleev at Home1 Mary Virginia Orna