DIMITRI MENDELEIEV: Classifying elements without understanding them.

We are going to talk about the most bearded and the biggest rockstar of Russian
scientists... Maybe you have already happened to be confronted with the poster of a
movie and your reaction was to say to yourself: ''but this movie looks super boring!'' and
actually, once after seeing said movie, you say to yourself: ''this movie was awesome!''
Well, Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleiev, that should do you exactly the same same thing!
We all know its periodic table of elements. When we see it for the first time, we all say
to ourselves: ''what is this horror?'' and in the end, if we study the context of this thing a
little bit, it is just awesome!

So, first of all, we have to do a bit of history in relation to Mendeleiev. He was born in
1834 in Siberia and we know that he came from a very large family, but we know so
little about him that in fact we are not even able to say if he was the 11th or 14th child of
his siblings. What we do know, however, is that when his father died, the family became
poor with all these mouths to feed and they had to leave for Saint Petersburg in 1849,
Dimitri was then 15 years old. His mother will detect in him college predispositions in
science and therefore, she will struggle so that at least he can go to the university of
sciences and he will therefore start his studies in chemistry in 1850, then aged 16 years
old. He caught tuberculosis, but recovered from it and he will work during his studies
with Kirchhoff and Benzene, the same Kirchhoff of Kirchhoff's law, also known as the
law of knots and Benzene, it is indeed the Benzene of the Bunsen burner. Interesting to
note however that Benzene is absolutely not the inventor of the Bunsen burner. In fact, it
was one of his assistants who improved the process to end up with the Bunsen burner
and he named it Bunsen because of his master. What is important to know is that
Kirchhoff and Benzène together are the founding fathers of spectroscopy. Spectroscopy,
what is it? It is the fact of taking the light emitted or reflected by an object and breaking
it down with a prism and studying this decomposition. Then, from this decomposition of
light, determine what makes up the object of study. This is a bit what forms the basis of
all that exists in spectrography today to allow us to know the composition of an object.

In 1863, Mendeleiev became a professor of chemistry and in 1869, he released a

publication which was called ''the dependence between the properties of the atomic
masses of the elements''. This thing alone represents, not one, not two, but 417 strokes of
genius! Before going into the details of this thing, we must do a little rundown on what
we know about matter at that time. Without going over the whole history of Ancient
Greece, with Aristotle who thought that matter was made up of water, earth, air and
fire... On the other hand, we remember that at that time, there was also Democritus who
had this brilliant idea to say: ''if I take an object and I cut it in half, I take half and I cut
in half, I take the end that is left and I cut in half, I cut in half, I cut in half, etc., there
will be a time when I will no longer be able to cut in half. From then on, it will be
uncuttable, unbreakable, ἄτομος in Greek, that is to say: atom. And the atomists were
born. This idea according to which there were elementary bricks in the material, which
were common to all the material, whatever it is. And, it is an idea that will progress, but
at the time that interests us, that is to say second half of the 19th century, we have not
yet discovered the electron and we think that the atom, if it exists, is the smallest thing
there is to compose matter... Yes, because at that time, there were still people who were
non-atomists. Just for the record: the electron was discovered by Thompson and it was
only in 1912 that we discovered the nucleus (that's Rutherford) and it was a revolution in
1897! At the time, Thompson called it the corpuscle, which is much smaller than an
atom and therefore...revolution!

So, now, we're going to loop back a bit to the 19th century, when people studied the
elements that make up matter. We are in 1817 and Döbereiner highlights what he calls
the triads, ah the famous Döbereiner triads...! In fact, what he notices is that when we
take three elements of successive atomic masses that have the same chemical properties,
the atomic mass of the one in the middle is in fact the average of the masses of the other
two. He gives the following examples of triads: Cl-Br-I or Ca-Br-Ba and indeed, it
works. In 1859, the model will be extended by the French Jean-Baptiste Dumas, who
will extend the triads to the tetrads, so it will go from 3 to 4. In fact, what he notices is
that if he takes a triad and finds a lighter element that has the same chemical properties,
in fact from one tetrad to another (and of course, he no longer speaks of arithmetic
average, since there, we are on 4 elements and no longer 3 and there is therefore no
longer any median), so what he notices, therefore, is that the difference in atomic mass
between the first and the second element or between the second and the third or between
the third and the fourth element is almost the same for each tetrad. As if the same thing
happened at regular intervals. The advantage of this model of tetrads is that it allows
many more possibilities, especially for experiments, to validate the differences between
the different elements, than the triads which are really limited. But so far, nothing very
special... We have a small beginning of something, but nothing big.

In 1862, the Frenchman Chamcourtois developed what he called the telluric screw. That
is to say that he really notices a periodicity when we classify the elements in order of
atomic mass (increasing or decreasing), a periodicity of the chemical properties. So he
imagines a cylinder with a screw pitch that would make 16 elements of a turn, and he
notices that each column in fact has elements that have the same chemical properties.
There is also another representation on a plane, in the form of a spiral, but it is exactly
the same thing. And the whole scientific community, seeing that, is going to fuck off, but
as it should! Because Chamcourtois is a geologist... A geologist? But let him take care of
his caves! Why not a psychologist or a sociologist while we're at it! Except that
Chamcourtois did not say his last word and in 1864, the British Newlands will rely on
his work to state the law of the octave. Then, the law of the octave consists in saying that
there is a real periodicity in the elements. Very precisely, what it says is: “The 8th
element following a given element looks very exactly like the 1st element, as the 8th
note of the octave looks like the 1st note of the octave. And this time, as he's really a
chemist, the scientific community looks at that and... doesn't give a damn about him too!
First because it only works up to calcium and then it doesn't work anymore. Moreover,
one wonders: but why 8? It's completely arbitrary, maybe with 12 it would work too?
with 14? 9? 5? etc.

Our good old Dimitri Ivanovitch Mendeleiev arrives in 1869, with his little paper ''the
dependencies between the atomic masses of the elements''. This paper, in fact, is in itself
a world revolution, not only in chemistry, but in our understanding of matter. This paper
is very precisely the law of periodic classification of the elements, which will lead to
what is called the periodic table of the elements. Mendeleiev, what does he say in this
paper? Many different things.

1- Periodicity.

The first thing he says, of course, is that if we classify the elements according to their
atomic mass, there is a periodicity in their chemical properties.

2- Similarities.

The second thing is that when two elements have the same chemical properties, either
they have atomic masses that are almost the same, or in fact they happen to have a
difference between their atomic masses that is regular with respect to all elements that
have exactly the same chemical properties.

3- Everything is linked.

The third thing he says is that there is an intrinsic relationship to the elements between
their atomic mass, their chemical properties and their valence. Valence, very simply, is
the maximum number of distinct elements that can be attached to one element. O, for
example, has a valence of 2 because O can be stuck with 2 actomes of H to form a water
molecule. H, on the other hand, can only be bonded to O once, so H has a valence of 1.
There are elements that have valences of 3, 4, there are elements that have a valence of
0. It must be remembered, because it is important, that at that moment we have no idea
that there could be anything smaller than an atom in a atom. So not only do we not know
the electron, but we also have no idea what a valence electronic shell is, a peripheral
shell.

4- Preeminence in nature.

The fourth thing Mendeleiev says that goes completely unnoticed: the lightest elements
are the most common elements in nature. This is something that will be widely verified
as soon as we understand how thermonuclear fusion works and how stars are born,
which are the source of all the matter that makes us up today.

5- Everything comes from the mass.

Then he says that the importance of the atomic mass defines the characteristics of the
element. So there, same thing. We have no idea that there is a nucleus, but Mendeleiev
already understood that the atomic mass has to do with what composes this element,
even if he has no idea that this element is actually makes it a compound.

6- Missing elements.

There, it's the coup de grace, the delusional thing, because if he had been wrong, he
would have been humiliated for centuries and centuries... When he does his research in
fact, there is a problem, it’s that it doesn't always work, so he looks for periodicities, it
looks for chemical properties, etc., and what happens is that from time to time, on an
element, he realizes that it goes from an element that has certain chemical properties to
the next element, but in fact passes the periodicity twice and rather than thinking there
must be some error in his theory, no, he doesn't and he says: ''Here, in the middle there is
an element, it's just that we don't know it yet. So, there are still a lot of elements to
discover and not only that, but I can already give you both its chemical properties, its
valence and approximately its atomic mass. And... he will be right!

7- When in doubt, you are wrong…

We can correct the atomic mass of an element from the knowledge of the atomic masses
of the surrounding elements. That is to say, he is so convinced that what he is saying is
true, that he says: ''if in fact there is an element which you realize has an atomic mass
too large by compared to what it should, don't trust your calculation, trust the table, you
were wrong!'' This guy is the most badass bearded Russian scientist. Mendeleiev, in
Antiquity, he would have cross path with Aristotle, he would have beaten him up!

8- In fact, we just need the mass.

So, we are no longer close to that, he says that we can quite deduce the characteristics of
an element from its atomic mass. That is to say that if we can give him the atomic mass
of an element that we don't know, that no one knows, he will be able to tell you
everything that this element does. And he will be right! This guy is a genius.

So it was initially represented vertically, but then it was represented horizontally. Then,
when we discovered the electron, when we understood a little better how covalent bonds
work, etc., all that took up a lot of space and the periodic table of the elements is still
today one of the most beautiful works of discovery of a scientist. It is a marvel of
simplicity, complexity and completeness!

Just two or three things about Mendeleiev, because he's quite a rock n roll guy... You
should know that he was married to a woman who was six years older than him and with
whom he had two children. But one day, he falls in love with Anna Ivanova Popova,
who is his best friend's niece and who is much, much younger than him... He is
completely obsessed with her, so much that he asks her to marry him and tells her that
he will commit suicide if she refuses!

So he starts divorce proceedures with his first wife and then he marries Anna Ivanova,
while he is still married to his first wife. The divorce from his first wife came a month
after his marriage to Anna Ivanova, so he was a little bigamous for a while... for a
month, in fact. But still, the Orthodox Church says, “No, wait, it doesn't work that way!
When you divorce, you have to wait seven years before remarrying. So Mendeleiev is a
bigamist!''

And unfortunately, that will prevent him from entering the Russian Academy of
Sciences. But to signify how this guy was a rockstar in his country, Tsar Alexander II is
going to say about it: '' Mendeleiev has two wives, it's true. But me, I only have one
Mendeleiev!'' Dimitri, what! We could call him Dimitswag!

Well, the end of his life is a little less brilliant... In 1902, he tried to explain what makes
up the ether. That is to say, before Einstein, people thought that space was basically
made up of some kind of matter that we weren't sure if it was a gas or a liquid or
something. It was called ether. And Mendeleiev will try to demonstrate what this ether is
made of and he will therefore suppose the existence of two elements which are much
lighter than H. He will obviously be completely wrong.

In 1905, however, he will be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for the year
1906. The problem is that there is a Sweden man by the name of Svante Arrhenius who
is very angry with Dimitswag, because he didn't give a shit about the theories of this
Svante Arrhenius, and so Arrhenius is going to lobby like hell so that Mendeleiev doesn't
receive the prize, on the pretext that in fact his discovery was almost 40 years old and
that there was no reason to give him a Nobel Prize that year. It worked and he won't
have it. And this Arrhenius will lobby like a madman so much that the following year,
Mendeleiev will not even be able to be nominated and anyway, he will die in 1907 and
that's the end of Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleiev.

PS. He was happily married to his second wife and they had 4 kids together, including
twins!