Mendeleev Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

I have achieved an inner freedom. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

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

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

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

There is nothing in this world that I fear to say.
~ 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

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

No one nor anything can silence me. ~ 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

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

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 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