Who is Dmitri Mendeleev?

Russian chemist, Dmitri Mendeleev was born in 1834 in a Siberian village. His early life has been described as tumultuous; his father lost his sight and died when Dmitri was thirteen, leaving his family in financial difficulties.

His mother prioritised Dmitiri’s academic potential, taking him and his sister to St Petersburg, where he studied at the Main Pedagogical Institute. When his mother died, he carried out his doctoral research in St Petersburg where he explored the interactions of alcohols with water.

 

Between 1859 and 1861 he went to Paris to study the densities of gases, and he travelled to Germany where he studied capillarity and surface tension that subsequently led to his theory of ‘absolute boiling point.’ In 1861 he returned to Russia to publish everything he knew on organic chemistry in a 500-page textbook, and by 1864 he became a professor at the Saint Petersburg Technological Institute and Saint Petersburg State University.

As he continued his research, he tried to classify the elements according to the chemical properties. He became aware of a repeating pattern – elements with similar properties appeared at regular intervals. He arranged the elements in order of increasing relative atomic mass and noticed the chemical properties of these elements revealed a trend, which led to the formation of the periodic table.

 

Beyond his work in chemistry, during the 1870s, he devoted time to help the Russian industry, particularly in strengthening the productivity in agriculture. He became very active in exploring the Russian petroleum industry and developed projects in the coal industry in the Donets Basin. Additionally, he was responsible for creating and introducing the metric system to Russia.

 

In 1942 the Leverhulme Trust endowed a lecture in memory of the first Viscount Leverhulme, founder of the Lever Brothers 

The Lecture is given every three years before the Liverpool and North West Regional Group to promote chemical or technological research or education.

Prof Maitland is the 20th recipient of this prestigious award and gave his lecture on ‘Avoiding catastrophic climate change; Paris 2015 set the targets, can the UK deliver?’.

Read our full write-up on the lecture here.    

 

Geoffrey Maitland (second left) receives his award from Alan Bayliss, Chair of the Board of Trustees, with Trevor Rhodes (left), Chair of SCI’s Liverpool and North West Group, and Sharon Todd, SCI’s Executive Director. Image: Mike Halliday

 

Reace Edwards, from Chester University, collects her award from Prof Maitland. She is the top scoring second year student on the BEng/MEng Chemical Engineering degree course. Image: Mike Halliday

 

Oliver Stanfield won his award for highest-achieving third year student on the BSc Chemistry with Industrial Experience course at the University of Bangor. Image: Mike Halliday

 

Aaisha Patel, from Liverpool John Moores University, is the best second year student on the BSc (Hons) Chemical and Pharmaceutical Science programme. Image: Mike Halliday