Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev- Russian chemist and inventor

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev; 8 February 1834 – 2 February 1907 O.S. 27 January 1834 – 20 January 1907) was a Russian chemist and inventor. He formulated the Periodic Law, created his own version of the periodic table of elements, and used it to correct the properties of some already discovered elements and also to predict the properties of eight elements yet to be discovered.

Mendeleev was born in the village of Verkhnie Aremzyani, near Tobolsk in Siberia, to Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev and Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva (née Kornilieva). His grandfather was Pavel Maximovich Sokolov, a priest of the Russian Orthodox Churchfrom the Tver region. Ivan, along with his brothers and sisters, obtained new family names while attending the theological seminary. Mendeleev was raised as an Orthodox Christian, his mother encouraging him to "patiently search divine and scientific truth." His son would later inform that he departed from the Church and embraced a form of deism.

Mendeleev is thought to be the youngest of either 11, 13, 14 or 17 siblings; the exact number differs among sources. His father was a teacher of fine arts, politics and philosophy. Unfortunately for the family's financial well being, his father became blind and lost his teaching position. His mother was forced to work and she restarted her family's abandoned glass factory. 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, his mother took Mendeleev across the entire state of Russia from Siberia to Moscow with the aim of getting Mendeleev a higher education. The university in Moscow did not accept him. The mother and son continued to St. Petersburg to the father’s alma mater. The now poor Mendeleev family relocated to Saint Petersburg, where he entered the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1850. After graduation, he contracted tuberculosis, causing him to move to the Crimean Peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Seain 1855. While there he became a science master of the Simferopol gymnasium №1. In 1857, he returned to Saint Petersburg with fully restored health.