Books about dmitri mendeleev biography wikipedia
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The book was widely translated and became a standard reference in the field.
2. Imagine today a write-up of a scientific meeting becoming national news, and you will appreciate the peculiarity. The Ideal Gas Lawyer: Expanding Science on the Banks of the Neva, 44,
4.
An understanding of the Great Reforms from the conservatives' point of view is thus necessary to understanding Mendeleev's bureaucratic work and, moreover, his chemistry.
The Great Reforms were a set of seven measures: emancipation (1861), the university statute (1863), rural councils (zemstva) (1864), the European-style judicial system (1864), censorship reform (1865), municipal autonomy (1870), and the universal draft (1874).
Both Russian history and the history of science converge around the notion of a "systematic misfit": the tension between the attempt to create comprehensive, orderly systems, constructed for stability and clarity, and the awkward application of those systems to the real world. His legacy continues to inspire scientists and educators worldwide, highlighting the enduring importance of his contributions to chemistry and science.
A Well-Ordered Thing
Gordin
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2019 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-17238-5
Contents
List of Figures, xi,Preface to the Revised Edition, xiii,
Preface, xv,
Note to the Reader, xix,
1. It is difficult to characterize precisely Mendeleev's political position because it did not fall into the easy categories of "reactionary," "liberal," or "radical" that usually organize our understanding of past politics.
Mendeleev wanted Russian readers to hear another message. After describing Cannizzaro's reform of atomic weights, Mendeleev offered special praise of the unanimity with which the chemists had validated the measure:
The result [of voting on Cannizzaro's suggestions] was unexpectedly unanimous and important. The appeal soliciting attendance was sent out in July over the signatures of some of the most prominent names in chemistry.
It is necessary not to forget here that the expert is also subject to oath like witnesses, and true statements are demanded from him, but [the officers of the court] don't give him the opportunity to speak truly.
Mendeleev, the raznochintsy, and the rest of the professionals each wanted the opportunity to speak truly. Following the nineteenth-century historian Nikolai Karamzin (and his precursor Edmund Burke), conservatives believed that tradition, the residue of historical epochs as revealed in national institutions, was a valuable force for stability.(Reactionaries, by contrast, held to tradition for its own sake.) When adherence to all traditions threatened the stability of society, conservatives embraced gradual reform as a way to adapt to change within the framework of historical traditions.
Thus, the functions, values, and structures the state had accumulated through historical accretion were the features that made those institutions worth preserving. His father, Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev, was a teacher who went blind and lost his position, plunging the family into poverty. To the extent that a system can predict future behavior or events, it provides stability; on the other hand, such regularity makes it vulnerable to misfits that refuse to comply with its rigor.
On three days during the first week of September 1860 in the southern town of Karlsruhe, chemists from across Europe assembled to discuss weighty issues — or, more accurately, the issue of weight, which was threatening to overload their science with inconsistency and contradiction. These resources are especially useful for chemistry students, historians of science, or those involved in educational research.
- ‘Mendeleev on the Periodic Law: Selected Writings, 18691905’ This book compiles Mendeleev’s original essays and letters.
This is not the fault of Russians, or chemistry, or Mendeleev, but is merely a consequence of the inevitable messiness of the natural and social worlds in which we live. Whether you’re a seasoned chemist, a student beginning your scientific journey, or someone simply fascinated by great minds in history, there is a book about Mendeleev that will inform and inspire.
These books use illustrations, simplified language, and storytelling techniques to explain complex ideas like atomic structure and periodicity.
- ‘Dmitri Mendeleev: Chemist Who Organized the Elements’ Part of a children’s biography series, this book explains Mendeleev’s impact in a format suitable for school-age readers.
- ‘The Mystery of the Periodic Table’ Though it covers more than just Mendeleev, this engaging book introduces the concept of element classification through a narrative that includes his major breakthroughs.
Books Highlighting Mendeleev’s Broader Interests
More Than Just Chemistry
Mendeleev had interests beyond the realm of pure chemistry.
In attacking the person of the tsar, terrorist radicals pointed to the same feature of the topography of power: for change to happen, the top had to permit it — or be eliminated.
The immediate mechanism for reform was the much-maligned Imperial bureaucracy, which in Mendeleev's lifetime experienced the rise of a new stratum of civil servants — the raznochintsy (literally, "people of various ranks").