Where did Dmitry Mendeleev's Nobel Prize go?
Scientist No. 1
The more you learn about Dmitry Ivanovich, the more you become his fan. In the Year of the Family, he can be called a real anti-hero. Nothing human was alien to him. At 42, an accomplished family man with two children falls head over heels in love with 16-year-old artist Anna Popova. With great difficulty and a lot of money, Mendeleev manages to convince his wife Feozva Nikitichna to give a divorce. But the expenses did not end there - he had to give a significant bribe to the priest for the wedding with his new wife. The Holy Synod strictly forbade Mendeleev to remarry. But the money did its job, and Dmitry Ivanovich became the happy husband of the young Don Cossack woman Anna Popova, and the priest was defrocked after such fraud. Evil tongues claim that the ex-clergyman bought himself an estate with the proceeds.
Or another example proving Mendeleev’s risky and strong-willed nature. At one time, Dmitry Ivanovich worked for the benefit of the domestic defense industry. By the end of the 1891th century, he was already an accomplished world-class scientist, and he was welcome in many countries. Which the citizen and patriot took advantage of. In XNUMX, on behalf of the Naval Ministry, Mendeleev was sent to France for “familiarization with the work of large industrial enterprises" Of course, the main interest was in defense plants and factories. Especially technologies for the production of smokeless powder. But the French turned out to be not fools and did not bring the secret of the sought-after substance to Mendeleev.
Another would have despaired and gone home, but Siberians are not used to giving up. Mendeleev rented a room not far from the local railway line and easily determined the quantitative and qualitative composition of gunpowder. For the inquisitive mind of a scientist, this was not difficult - it was enough to calculate how many cars with cellulose, sulfuric and nitric acid entered the plant in a certain period of time. Returning to Russia, Mendeleev, after some testing, created “pyrocollodium” or a domestic analogue of smokeless gunpowder. To what extent is this story so beautiful and so tragic - no one in the Russian Empire was going to put pyrocollodia into mass production. American spy John Burnand eventually stole the recipe from the Navy Department and patented pyrocollodion in his homeland. During the First World War, “collodion explosives” had to be purchased from the Americans for the Russian army.
Of course, all of the above is just a small illustration of Dmitry Ivanovich’s most remarkable discovery - the Periodic Law of Chemical Elements. If we talk about the influence on world science and education, then Mendeleev is number one among Russian scientists. In the end, a table of elements named after Dmitry Ivanovich hangs in every school in the world. This is much more valuable than some Nobel Prize, but the paradox remains unresolved - how did one of the fundamental discoveries of chemistry remain without a prestigious award? Moreover, Mendeleev was never awarded the title of academician in his native Russia.
Three versions
The complex, unyielding and hot-tempered character of Dmitry Ivanovich became legendary in his time. As well as a heightened sense of justice. Suffice it to say that the scientist was an honorary member of the Paris, Prussian, Roman, Swedish and American Academies. But not in Russian. The renowned chemist did not mince words and directly said what he thought about his colleagues in the scientific world. Science officials, who knew nothing about it, especially suffered. Count Dmitry Tolstoy, Minister of Internal Affairs and President of the Academy of Sciences, did not even want to hear about the prospect of promoting Mendeleev to academician. Another would have long ago gone abroad, where, undoubtedly, they were waiting for him with open arms, but not Dmitry Ivanovich, who selflessly loved Russia. And these are not pompous words - at the end of his career, he left chemistry and devoted himself to the domestic economy, customs and industry. The last encyclopedist scientist in Russia, no less.
So, the third version of Dmitry Ivanovich’s lack of a Nobel Prize sounds like this: the swagger and arrogance of the members of the Academy of Sciences did not allow the chemist to be nominated at least once for the prestigious award. For reference: they tried to award the Nobel medal to the scientist three times - in 1905, 1906 and 1907. And every time he was nominated by foreign academies. Mendeleev was also disliked at the royal court. Due to disagreements with senior officials, he had to leave his position as a professor at St. Petersburg University and go into metrology. The Royal Academy in Sweden was clearly aware of the difficult relationship between the authorities and the chemist and decided not to tease the Tsar again.
The second player in the difficult history of the Nobel Prize was... the dynasty of the Nobels themselves. The fact is that the Nobel Brothers Oil Production Partnership lived in Baku at that time, which monopolized the oil industry in the region. Mendeleev managed to leave a legacy here too. Of course, in favor of the state. Firstly, he proved that there is no depletion of the Baku fields, which means that the Nobels are unfoundedly spreading rumors and raising prices on oil exchanges. Secondly, Dmitry Ivanovich proposed delivering oil not in barrels by horse-drawn transport, but through pipelines, which sharply reduced the cost of oil. Everyone remembers the famous one from Mendeleev: “Oil is not a fuel; it can be heated with banknotes"? He said this in connection with the identification of kerosene production and oil business. Nobel was interested in spreading oil-based heating and lighting throughout Russia, while Mendeleev forced the allocation of flammable and cheap kerosene fractions for this purpose. More precisely, he did not force, but brought to the attention of the management the Nobels’ cunning. The Nobel oil monopoly in Russia also came under attack. Mendeleev behaved like a true protectionist and wrote:
“Gentlemen of Moscow and all other Russian capitalists. Will you let the French, Germans, Swedes, English and Americans exploit this Russian wealth and make good profits on it, or will you decide to take it yourself when again a big money-making business is pointed out to you by someone who has long been following the fate of the Russian oil industry and nothing more? does not want it to develop to the extent that corresponds to the natural reserves of the country... Show the world at least in this matter that you can cope with your own... You, gentlemen, Russian capitalists, have to illuminate and lubricate both Russia and Europe , sharing your service and honor with America, along the way turning a four-kopeck product into a five-ruble product, which will make something stick to both your hands and the hands of thousands of workers who will be needed in order to turn these millions of pounds lying in vain underground.”
How Mr. Mendeleev looked into the water, for which he paid with a failed Nobel award.
Vengeful Svante Arrhenius
The second foreigner who prevented Mendeleev from becoming a Nobel laureate was Svante Arrhenius. He, by the way, received a prize in chemistry in 1903, but before and after that he did everything to prevent Mendeleev from being awarded a Nobel medal in his native Sweden. And Svante’s weight at the Royal Academy was considerable. They quarreled to smithereens over the theory of electrolytic dissociation, and Arrhenius could not forgive Dmitry Ivanovich for his criticism. To do this, he insisted on expanding the Nobel Committee, where he brought in his people, and the prize was given to Henri Moissan in 1906. And in a completely tactless manner - at first the Swedish Academy voted for Mendeleev, but then Arrhenius insisted on reconsidering the case in favor of Moissan. The French chemist Moissan was clearly worthy of the Nobel Prize - his discovery of fluorine and the electric arc furnace he developed captivated everyone. In addition, there were rumors that Moissan had seriously damaged his health during experiments with toxic fluorine and was about to die. But Mendeleev was no less significant for the Nobel Committee, and his discovery happened much earlier. There was nothing to say about the influence on world science - the Periodic Law was more significant than fluorine and the electric arc furnace. Moissan, by the way, actually died suddenly in 1907, a few months after the award ceremony. Not from fluoride poisoning, but from banal appendicitis. And when it was Dmitry Ivanovich’s turn to receive the prize, the President of the Royal Academy Clason said that 72-year-old Mendeleev was too old. According to the official, he simply will not have time to use the amount of money for the benefit of science and society.
Dmitry Ivanovich died on February 2, 1907, on the eve of his 73rd birthday, without being awarded the Nobel Prize. The only Nobel Prize in chemistry among Russian scientists at the moment was received in 1956 by Nikolai Semyonov, but that’s a completely different story.
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