Is it true that Dmitry Mendeleev saw his table of periodic elements in a dream?

It is common that the discoverer of the table of chemical elements saw it in a dream. We decided to check if this is really so.

You can learn about such a dream-open from various media: Gazeta.ru, "Mir 24" And "Public television of Russia". About this version of the invention Writes Faculty of Chemistry of St. Petersburg State University, about it also They tell Schoolchildren as part of a course of chemistry. This story is also popular in materials on horoscopes and prophetic dreams. Chemist attributed The next phrase: “I saw in a dream a table in which the elements were located as necessary. I woke up, immediately recorded the data on a sheet of paper and fell asleep again. ”

By the middle of the 19th century, humanity already knew more than 60 chemical elements, attempts to systematize this knowledge have been made before Mendeleev repeatedly. French chemist Alexander Emil Chancurtua in 1862 Published Labor called “The Tutlurians of the screw”, in which he proposed to systematize a screw or spiral structure, which visualized the patterns of the chemical properties of various elements. However, the idea did not attract the attention of the scientific community. Three years later, British chemist and musician John Alexander Newlands I tried it To discover musical harmony in the elements of the world and published his work - this is how his “Law Octave” was born, extremely skeptical of the London Chemical Society. German chemist Julius Lotar Meyer I tried it To group elements according to their valentines, however, such a table was doomed in advance, since the same element can have different valency in various compounds.

Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev Published The first version of its periodic table of chemical elements on March 14-15 (March 26-27) of 1869 in the first edition of the textbook “Fundamentals of Chemistry”. The hypothesis that the table dreamed of a scientist in a dream is refuted by the fact that in the Museum-Archive of Mendeleev at St. Petersburg University Stored Three options for a draft of this work, dated to February 1869.

Where did the version come from that the table of the scientist could dream? 40 years after the publication of the periodic table, in 1919, a friend Mendeleev Alexander Alexandrovich Foreigners Published He said his memoirs, in them that he heard a version of a dream from a chemist himself. During the life of Mendeleev, such a story did not appear in the press, it was not noted in the archive, which the scientist paid a lot of attention. However, there is mentionThat foreigners and during the life of the great chemist told this story, in particular, to his students. The reaction of the scientist does not speak in favor of the version of the dream of opening. He Offended: “I, perhaps, thought over her for twenty years, and you think: I sat and suddenly ... ready” (the phrase is found in the memoirs of O.E. Ozarovskaya, who personally knew the scientist). Most likelythat foreigners could visit the chemist when he dozed off over the manuscript, this curious situation could well be formed the basis of the bike he told.

Thus, there is no documentary evidence in favor of the version of the genial dream of the scientist, the presence of drafts in the archives contradicts this version. It is likely that a friend composed and told his friend about the great chemist, but judging by the words of the scientist himself, such a joke did not find a response from him.

Most likely not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. 40 degrees Dmitry Mendeleev. Igor Dmitriev. Scientists against myths-8-9 (video)
2. Is it true that Mendeleev invented vodka?