The Origin of Mendeleev’s Discovery of the Periodic System

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Masanori Kaji

Published:

2018

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

D.I. Mendeleev (1834–1907) was a 19th-century Russian chemist whose discovery of the periodic law is a milestone of 19th century chemistry and continues to occupy a central place in chemistry. Despite an enormous amount of study on the origin of Mendeleev’s discovery of the periodic law, relatively little research has been done on either the conceptual or social origin of the law. This chapter aims to fill that gap. B. M. Kedrov (1903–1985) was a pioneering historian on the origin of Mendeleev’s discovery. Kedrov discovered Mendeleev’s archived materials related to his first periodic table (dated February 17, 1869) at the Mendeleev Museum in the St. Petersburg State Museum at the end of the 1940s. He then began full-fledged research on Mendeleev’s discovery of the periodic law, which culminated in the publication of The Day of a Great Discovery (Kedrov 1958) and other books which are generally reliable resources (Mendeleev and Kedrov 1958, 1960). In his meticulous reconstruction of Mendeleev’s compilation of the first periodic table, Kedrov emphasized the “one-day discovery” (February 17, 1869), and paid only scant attention to both Mendeleev’s earlier works and the social context of the discovery. At about the same time, R. B. Dobrotin analyzed Mendeleev’s earliest works, especially those of the 1850s, and argued that essential elements of the future periodic system already existed (Dobrotin 1953; Shchukarev and Dobrotin 1954). However, Kedrov’s version of the discovery h…

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