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Mendeleyev. Shostakovich. Blok. Владимир Окрепилов
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Автор произведения Владимир Окрепилов
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
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Butlerov, Koksharov, physicists Wield and Gadolin were the members of the commission. Butlerov nominated two candidatures: D. I. Mendeleyev and professor N. N. Beketov from Kharkov University. Both scientists were at the chairs of “pure” chemistry at the universities and formally couldn’t claim to the vacant post of academician at the chair of technology and chemistry. But Butlerov hadn’t found worthier candidature. The commission hesitated in the choice between the two scientists. Beketov had learned about it and agreed that it was necessary to nominate Mendeleyev in that case.
While characterizing the candidature of D. I. Mendeleyev, academicians A. M. Butlerov, P. L. Chebyshev, N. I. Koksharov and F. V. Ovsyannikov noted his extraordinary accomplishments in the science: “Professor Mendeleyev takes first place in Russian chemistry, and we dare to think, sharing the general opinion of Russian chemists, that the place in the primary class of the Russian empire belongs to him by right. By adding professor Mendeleyev to its milieu, the Academy will honour the Russian science and, therefore, itself as its spiritual representative.”
Mendeleyev started preparing the speech, which he was to pronounce after the election. The speech was named “Which Academy do we need?”. The necessity of changes was its main topic.
Indispensable secretary of the Academy of Sciences K. S. Veselovsky tried to disrupt the balloting. He advised the president F. P. Litke to use the “veto” so that the elections would not have taken place at all. However, the elections took place in November of 1880. 18 people took part in it: 16 members of the physico-mathematical department, the president who had had two votes and the indispensable secretary. Exactly the half of the staff of the Department of physico-mathematical sciences seconded the candidature of Mendeleyev. The University scientists were the supporters of the election: A. M. Butlerov, P. L. Chebyshev, N. I. Koksharov and A. S. Famintsyn. Indispensable secretary of the Academy K. S. Veselovsky was one of the main opponents. Mendeleyev lacked four votes to become an Actual Member of the Academy of Sciences. The academic majority has blackballed the scientist.
The paper, where the approximate allocation of the forces was written by the hand of Butlerov: “It is evident – the black ones: Litke (2), Veselovsky, Gelmersen, Schrenk, Maksimovich, Strauch, Schmidt, Wield and Gadolin. The white ones: Bunyakovsky, Koksharov, Butlerov, Famintsyn, Ovsyannikov, Chebyshev, Alekseev, Struve and Savich.”
The voting against Mendeleyev broadly echoed in the press. The question of the reasons of having not elected the scientist to the members of the Academy of Sciences is rather disputable. The contemporaries mentioned different versions: “intrigues of German party”, a difficult temper of D. I. Mendeleyev, a competition between the Academy of Sciences and Saint-Petersburg University. It is also necessary to take into consideration the fact that the periodical law was one of the items, according to which Mendeleyev was recommended for academician, hasn’t absolutely consolidated in the scientific world and raised certain doubts yet.
Protests from different institutions and organizations fell to the Academy of Sciences. Mendeleyev received hundreds of sympathetic letters. During the small period after having been blackballed Mendeleyev got about 20 diplomas of the status of honorary member of the number of Russian universities and scientific societies.
Dmitry Ivanovich took hard the failed elections for academician, though the general attention and reaction of the press seemed to worry him more. He wrote in his letter to an old friend of him, the professor of the University in Kiev, P. P. Alekseev: “… I didn’t want to be elected to the Academy, I would have been discontent with it, because they don’t need there what I may give, and I don’t want to reorganize myself anymore. There is neither foreign pomposity, solid firmness in the object of studies, nor the affected religious rite in the temple of science may be in me, if it had never been.” Telegrams and sympathetic letters worried Mendeleyev. However, later Dmitry Ivanovich came to a conclusion that he was only a cause, thus, it was expressed “the wish to change the old with something new, but with its own…”. And he was ready to help “to transform the fundamentals of the Academy to something new, Russian, his own…”.
Unseldom the scientist had to overcome the hard periods of failures, misunderstanding and aloofness, arousing in him pessimism, tiredness and unbelief in his own strength. During one of such periods, in spring of 1884, he wrote a pathetic letter to the children from his first wife, Olga and Vladimir, a peculiar instruction for life, full of love to the children, and at the same time a will. The letter ended with the words: “… live with God, labour and truth. It’s time me had a rest, it’s time, farewell…”
By the twist of fate, rejected as a member of Petersburg Academy of Sciences, the scientist was unanimously elected at the beginning of the 1890’s as a member of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts.
D. I. Mendeleyev did a lot in the sphere of economy and industry of Russia.
He was always in earnest about agriculture and during a period he was making experiments at his plots in the estate of Boblovo. His niece N. Y. Kapustina-Gubkina wrote that during the first years after Dmitry Ivanovich had purchased the estate, he “took a great interest in his agricultural experiments.” There was fenced off a so-called experimental field with the samples of different fertilizer. The experiments gave a brilliant result. The peasants were amazed: the crop on the experimental field got above twice and three times the harvest on their fields. Kapustina-Gubkina remembered that once the peasants came to Dmitry Ivanovich with a question. After having finished the work, they couldn’t help asking about what had amazed them so much: “I say, Mitry Ivanych, your bread has grown so good over the Arzhany pond… Is it your talent or fortune?” The eyes of Dmitry Ivanovich flashed gaily and clearly, he grinned cunningly and said: “Certainly, brothers, the talent.” Sometimes he liked to talk to the peasants in their “vulgar manner”, and, according to the recollections of Kapustina-Gubkina, he did it very naturally, it suited very much “his Russian face.”
After some time the agricultural experiments in Boblovo were stopped because of the lack of time, but Mendeleyev applied to economic, agricultural and industrial problems of a larger scale.
Later he will say in his work “To the knowledge of Russia”: “In my life I had to take part in the fortune of three… affairs: oil, coal and iron-ore.” During the period of 1880–1883 he applied to chemistry, technology and economy of petroleum industry.
The scientist made the laboratory research on sublimation of petroleum at the Konstantinovsky factory of V. I. Ragozin near Yaroslavl. Under the observation of Mendeleyev at this factory there was made a special device, with the help of which the scientist was testing the organization of the continuous sublimation of petroleum.
While working in the “petroleum sphere”, Dmitry Ivanovich published the number of economical works. The main ideas, expressed in the economic works of this period (“The Letters about the factories”, etc.), come to the following. The industrialization of Russia at the present stage of its development is a historical necessity. The number of peculiarities of economic and geographical state of Russia – the underdeveloped natural resources, idle manpower or usable only seasonally, capacious home market of Russia itself and also of the neighbouring Asiatic countries, remoteness of many regions from the harbours and the rise in prices of imported hardware as a sequent of it – creates opportunities for developing the national industry.
D. I. Mendeleyev also studied the questions of economy of the coal industry. On the instructions of the government he studied the reasons of its crisis in the south of Russia. During winter and summer of 1888 Dmitry Ivanovich was in Donbas thrice, he learned the state of affairs at the main entrails, visited many mines and factories. He expounded the results of his trips in the number of official documents; he made reports at the meetings of Russian physico-mathematical society and broadly illustrated in a large publicistic article “The future power, resting on the shores of the Donetz.”
During the process of studying the industry of Donbas Dmitry Ivanovich came to a conclusion that the development of Russian industry was hampered by an incorrect correlation of the stuff export and the finished hardware import.