We tried climbing the Andes when we were hungover; we sent our brainwaves into outer space; we turned the unwanted data from the particle accelerator into art; we listened to 4-D sound; we reimagined the Periodic Table… What did you do this month?

PERIODIC PROPERTIES

The uncanny predictions and bizarre myths surrounding Dmitri Mendeleev

The history of science is littered with mankind’s often comically doomed attempts to rationalise and categorise the natural world. Arguably, no one has been more successful in this endeavour than Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, who, in 1869, observed repeating patterns of behaviour in the way chemical elements combine with each other. He recognised that the physical and chemical properties of elements were related to their atomic mass in a periodic way – that is to say, they could be arranged in a table, so that groups of elements with similar properties could be grouped together. He did this by listing the elements in rows or columns in order of atomic weight – and starting a new row or column when the characteristics of the elements began to repeat.

Amazingly, he claimed it all came to him in a dream. Quoted contemporaneously by Konstantin Aleksandrovich Inostrantzev, Mendeleev apparently claimed, ‘I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper – only in one place did a correction later seem necessary.’

But that wasn’t all. Mendeleev realised that his nascent ‘periodic table’ couldn’t possibly be complete, because there were clearly new discoveries yet to be made. So he also included what he called ‘holes’ in his table to cover as yet unidentified elements such as Gallium – and used the table’s structure to make incredibly accurate and specific predictions about their properties. (Today, there are almost twice as many known elements as there were in Mendeleev’s original table – the number has risen to 118 from the original 60.)

So far, so good. But Mendeleev is also renowned for another – equally influential – categorisation. Forget lithium, Rutherfordium, zirconium and krypton: arguably his greatest contribution to science is, according to folklore, determining the ‘Russian Standard’ for vodka. Fifteen years after the discovery that made his name, Mendeleev found himself appointed as Russia’s director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures. One his duties was to formulate new state standards for the production of vodka. It is said that under his esteemed advice, it was decreed that ‘Imperial quality’ vodka must have a standard strength of at least 40% .

Sadly, it turns out to be an inspired bit of marketing mythology. Mendeleev did indeed became head of the Archive of Weights and Measures in Saint Petersburg in 1892, but was never involved in setting alcohol strength standards. Moreover, it turns out that the 40% Russian Standard was actually set in 1843, when Mendeleev was only nine years old (although he did go on to write a dissertation researching alcoholic strengths of 70% and above).

Mendeleev did, however, make noticeable gains in the fields of meteorology, geology, and in the research of explosives, petroleum and other fossil fuels. He also made significant findings in the study of the expansion of liquids and gases, invented the smokeless powder Pyrocollodian and was responsible for introducing the metric system in Russia.

Most fittingly, he has his own synthetic chemical element named after him: mendelevium (Md), which has the atomic number 101.

However – there was one element whose property Mendeleev could not accept: radium, as discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie.

This was an unstable radioactive element that could apparently ‘fall apart’ and transmute into different elements in the process. Such an idea contradicted some of Mendeleev’s most fundamental principles: if true, it meant that elements could no longer be defined into set positions forever. Despite his many predictions, radioactive decay – one of the most defining and definitive features of modern chemistry – was something that Mendeleev simply couldn’t countenance.

It’s enough to drive anyone to research 70% strength alcohol…