Quotes & Sayings About Mendeleev

The establishment of a law, moreover, does not take place when the first thought of it takes form, or even when its significance is recognised, but only when it has been confirmed by the results of the experiment. — Dmitri Mendeleev

For his part, Mendeleev scanned Lecoq de Boisbaudran's data on gallium and told the experimentalist, with no justification, that he must have measured something wrong, because the density and weight of gallium differed from Mendeleev's predictions. This betrays a flabbergasting amount of gall, but as science philosopher-historian Eric Scerri put it, Mendeleev always "was willing to bend nature to fit his grand philosophical scheme." The only difference between Mendeleev and crackpottery is that Mendeleev was right: Lecoq de Boisbaudran soon retracted his data and published results that corroborated Mendeleev's predictions. — Sam Kean

We could live at the present day without a Plato, but a double number of Newtons is required to discover the secrets of nature, and to bring life into harmony with the laws of nature. — Dmitri Mendeleev

Knowing how contented, free, and joyful is life in the world of science, one fervently wishes that many would enter its portals. — Dmitri Mendeleev

That the nobility of Man, acquired in a hundred centuries of trial and error, lay in making himself the conquerer of matter, and that I had enrolled in chemistry because I wanted to maintain faithful to that nobility. That conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev's Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were laboriously learning to unravel, was poetry, loftier and more solemn than all the poetry we had swallowed doen in liceo; and come to think of it, it even rhymed! ...
[T]he chemistry and physics on which we fed, besides being in themselves nourishments vital in themselves, were the antidotes to Fascism ... because they were clear and distinct and verifiable at every step, and not a tissue of lies and emptiness like the radio and newspapers. — Primo Levi

Pleasures flit by - they are only for yourself; work leaves a mark of long-lasting joy, work is for others. — Dmitri Mendeleev

Mendeleev, unlike the squeamish Meyer, had balls enough to predict that new elements would be dug up. Look harder, you chemists and geologists, he seemed to taunt, and you'll find them. — Sam Kean

If all the elements are arranged in the order of their atomic weights, a periodic repetition of properties is obtained. This is expressed by the law of periodicity. — Dmitri Mendeleev

The most all penetrating spirit before which will open the possibility of tilting not tables, but planets, is the spirit of free human inquiry. Believe only in that. — Dmitri Mendeleev

For the first time I saw a medley of haphazard facts fall into line and order. All the jumbles and recipes and hotchpotch of the inorganic chemistry of my boyhood seemed to fit into the scheme before my eyes - as though one were standing beside a jungle and it suddenly transformed itself into a Dutch garden.
[Upon hearing the Periodic Table explained in a first-tern university lecture.] — C.P. Snow

There is nothing in this world that I fear to say.
— Dmitri Mendeleev

Conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev's Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were learning to unravel, was poetry ... — Primo Levi

We must expect the discovery of many as yet unknown elements-for example, elements analogous to aluminum and silicon- whose atomic weight would be between 65 and 75. — Dmitri Mendeleev

A few years later, Mendeleev, now famous, divorced his wife and wanted to remarry. Although the conservative local church said he had to wait seven years, he bribed a priest and got on with the nuptials. This technically made him a bigamist, but no one dared arrest him. When a local bureaucrat complained to the tsar about the double standard applied to the case- the priest was defrocked-the tsar primly replied, I admit, Mendeleev has two wives, but I have only one Mendeleev. — Sam Kean

The magnitude of the atomic weight determines the character of the element, just as the magnitude of the molecule determines the character of a compound body. — Dmitri Mendeleev

No one nor anything can silence me. — Dmitri Mendeleev

Work, look for peace and calm in work: you will find it nowhere else. — Dmitri Mendeleev

I want you to have this feeling too - it is my moral responsibility to help you achieve this inner freedom. — Dmitri Mendeleev

The elements, if arranged according to their atomic weights, exhibit an apparent periodicity of properties. — Dmitri Mendeleev

I had met a girl by chance that I might just as well not have met. A girl with red hair supposedly inherited from her grandfather, a plump girl with fair skin, broad lips, one eye light green and the other blue-violet, a girl who sometimes went wall-eyed and weighed around fifty-eight kilograms. Fifty-eight kilograms of water and lime, phosphorus, iron, as well as traces of other chemicals. Fifty-eight kilograms of water and a few pinches of the elements from her fellow countryman Mendeleev's table. Ten buckets of water brought to life by the great force of evolution or by our provincial God. — Tadeusz Konwicki

Elements which are similar as regards their chemical properties have atomic weights which are either of nearly the same value (eg. Pt, Ir, Os) or which increase regularly (eg. K, Ru, Cs). — Dmitri Mendeleev

Certain characteristic properties of elements can be foretold from their atomic weights. — Dmitri Mendeleev

There exists everywhere a medium in things, determined by equilibrium. — Dmitri Mendeleev

I have achieved an inner freedom. — Dmitri Mendeleev

No law of nature, however general, has been established all at once; its recognition has always been preceded by many presentiments. — Dmitri Mendeleev

Why do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense? I cannot soon give a solution to these questions ... It was clear that in the United States there was a development not of the best, but of the middle and worst sides of European civilization; the notorious general voting, the tendency to politics ... all the same as in Europe. A new dawn is not to be seen on this side of the ocean. — Dmitri Mendeleev

The elements which are the most widely diffused have small atomic weights. — Dmitri Mendeleev

I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper. — Dmitri Mendeleev

It is the function of science to discover the existence of a general reign of order in nature and to find the causes governing this order. And this refers in equal measure to the relations of man - social and political - and to the entire universe as a whole. — Dmitri Mendeleev

The edifice of science not only requires material, but also a plan. Without the material, the plan alone is but a castle in the air-a mere possibility; whilst the material without a plan is but useless matter. — Dmitri Mendeleev

When the elements are arranged in vertical columns according to increasing atomic weight, so that the horizontal lines contain analogous elements again according to increasing atomic weight, an arrangement results from which several general conclusions may be drawn. — Dmitri Mendeleev