Dmitri Mendeleev was born in Tobolsk, Siberia, Russia on February 8, 1834. Mendeleev was the youngest child of 17 siblings.At the age of 13,after the passing of his father and the destruction of his mother's factory by fire, Mendeleev attended the Gymnasium in Tobolsk.In 1849, the poor Mendeleev family relocated to St. Petersburg . After he graduated, an illness that was diagnod as tuberculosis caud him to move to the Crimean Peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea in 1855. While there he became chief science master of the Simferopol gymnasium №1. He returned with fully restored health to St. Petersburg in 1857.Between 1859 and 1861, he worked on the capillarity of liquids and the workings of the spectroscope in Heidelberg. In late August of 1861 he wrote his first book on the spectroscope in which it received high acclaim. In 1862, he married Feozva Nikitichna Leshcheva. Mendeleev became Professor of Chemistry at the Saint Petersburg Technological Institute and the University of St. Petersburg in 1863 he achieved tenure in 1867, and by 1871 had transformed St. Petersburg into an internationally recognized center for chemistry rearch. In 1865 he became Doctor of Science for his disrtation "On the Combinations of Water with Alcohol". In 1876, he became obsd wit
h Anna Ivanova Popova and began courting her; in 1881 he propod to her and threatened suicide if she refud. His divorce from Leshcheva was finalized one month after he had married Popova in early 1882. Even after the divorce, Mendeleev was technically a bigamist; the Russian Orthodox Church required at least 7 years before lawful re-marriage. His divorce and the surrounding controversy contributed to his failure to be admitted to the Russian Academy of Sciences . Though Mendeleev was widely honored by scientific organizations all over Europe, including the Copley Medal from the Royal Society of London, he resigned from St. Petersburg University on August 17, 1890.In 1893, he was appointed Director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures. It was in this role that he was directed to formulate new state standards for the production of vodka. Mendeleev also investigated the composition of oil fields, and helped to found the first oil refinery in Russia.Mendeleev died in 1907 in St. Petersburg, Russia from influenza. The Mendeleev crater on the Moon, as well as element number 101, the radioactive mendelevium, are named after him.
