Mendeleyev, Dmitry Ivanovich
. Mendeleyev, Dmitry Ivanovich (1834-1907), Russian chemist, best known for his development of the periodic law of the properties of the chemical elements. This law states that elements show a periodicity (regular pattern) of properties when they are arranged according to atomic weight. Mendeleyev was born in Tobol’sk, Siberia. He studied chemistry at the University of Saint Petersburg, and in 1859 he was sent to study at the University of Heidelberg. There he met the Italian chemist Stanislao Cannizzaro , whose views on atomic weight (see Atom ) influenced his thinking. Mendeleyev returned to Saint Petersburg and became professor of chemistry at the Technical Institute in 1863. He became professor of general chemistry at the University of Saint Petersburg in 1866. Mendeleyev was a renowned teacher, and, because no good textbook in chemistry was available, he wrote the two-volume Principles of Chemistry (1868-1870), which became a classic. During the writing of this book, Mendeleyev