Mendeleev, Maria

Fortunately, Mendeleev s mother, Maria, was a remarkable woman. Her father had established the first printing press and published the first newspaper in Siberia. Maria apparently inherited some of his determination. When her brother wanted to reopen a rundown glass factory that he owned at Aremziansk, a village 17 miles from Tobolsk, he wrote to ask her to recommend a capable manager and... 

In 1849, the same year that Dostoevski was arrested and sentenced to a Siberian labor camp, disaster struck the family again. The glass factory caught fire one winter night and burned to the ground. But the 57-year-old Maria Mendeleev again showed her determination. She decided that she would take her son to Moscow in order to get him admitted to the university there. She was convinced that he had great potential. 

The Mendeleev family then suffered a series of catastrophes. First, Mendeleev s father died in 1847. The following year, the glass factory burned to the ground. Maria decided that she would take her two remaining dependent children, Dimitri and his sister, Liza, to Moscow so that Dimitri could get higher education. The three made the 1,300-mile journey on foot and in wagons when they could find rides. In Moscow, the Mendeleevs bad luck continued. Entry to the university was based on a quota system, but Siberia had not yet been assigned a quota, so Dimitri was not even considered for admission. Other schools in Moscow simply turned down his applications because his Siberian education was not seen as adequate. 

Prof. Nicolai Arkadevic Ismailov (picture in Fig. 1 of [674]) was head of the physical chemistry laboratory in the Institute for Pharmaceutical Chemistry in Kharkov. He was bom on 22. 6. 1907 and died on 2. 10. 1961 and was one of the best-known Soviet specialists in the field of solution electrochemistry, with about 240 publications to his name. He was a member of the Scientific Academy of the Ukrainian SSR and had received the Mendeleev Prize. The co-author, Dr. Maria Semenovna Shraiber, bom on 11. 9. 1904, is still working today in the above named Institute. She has published over 50 papers on problems of pharmaceutical analysis (complexometry, paper chromatography and titrations in non-aqueous solutions, etc.) [511, 567, 633]. 

Mendeleev to Hieronymus G. Zeuthen, secretary of the Royal Danish Academy, of April 14, 1889. In French. Archive of the Royal Danish Academy of Science. Mendeleev s mention of the special Danish-Russian relationship was probably a reference to Princess Dagmar, the daughter of the Danish king Christian IX and, as Empress Maria Feodorovna, the wife of Russia s tsar since 1881, Alexander III. Mendeleev was a loyal and appreciated consultant of the tsar s administration. See Michael D. Gordin, A Well-Ordered Thing Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table (New York Basic Books, 2004), chapter 6. 

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