Person of the day : Dmitri Mendeleev : BIRTH : 8 February 1897

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Dmitri Mendeleev
Name	Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev
Born	8 February 1834
Place	Verkhnie Aremzyani, Tobolsk Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	2 February 1907 (aged 72)
Place	Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Nationality	Russian
Fields	Chemistry, physics and adjacent fields
Alma mater	Saint Petersburg University
Academic advisors	Gustav Kirchhoff
Notable students	Dmitri Petrovich Konovalov
	Valery Gemilian
	Alexander Baykov
Known for	Formulating the Periodic table of chemical elements
Notable awards	Davy Medal (1882)
	ForMemRS (1892)
Spouse	Feozva Nikitichna Leshcheva (1862–1871)
	Anna Ivanova Popova (1882)
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev ( 8 February 1834 – 2 February 1907 O.S. 27 January 1834 – 20 January 1907) was a Russian chemist and inventor.
He formulated the Periodic Law, created a farsighted version of the periodic table of elements, and used it to correct the properties of some already discovered elements and also to predict the properties of eight elements yet to be discovered.
Between 1859 and 1861, he worked on the capillarity of liquids and the workings of the spectroscope in Heidelberg.
In late August 1861 he wrote his first book on the spectroscope
Though Mendeleev was widely honored by scientific organizations all over Europe, including (in 1882) the Davy Medal from the Royal Society of London (which later also awarded him the Copley Medal in 1905).
He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society  in 1892.
In 1893 he was appointed director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures, a post which he occupied till his death.
In 1905, Mendeleev was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
In 1907, Mendeleev died at the age of 72 in Saint Petersburg from influenza.
The crater Mendeleev on the Moon, as well as element number 101, the radioactive mendelevium, are named after him.
Mendeleev made other important contributions to chemistry. The Russian chemist and science historian Lev Chugaev has characterized him as "a chemist of genius, first-class physicist, a fruitful researcher in the fields of hydrodynamics, meteorology, geology, certain branches of chemical technology (explosives, petroleum, and fuels, for example) and other disciplines adjacent to chemistry and physics, a thorough expert of chemical industry and industry in general, and an original thinker in the field of economy." Mendeleev was one of the founders, in 1869, of the Russian Chemical Society. He worked on the theory and practice of protectionist trade and on agriculture.
In an attempt at a chemical conception of the Aether, he put forward a hypothesis that there existed two inert chemical elements of lesser atomic weight than hydrogen. Of these two proposed elements, he thought the lighter to be an all-penetrating, all-pervasive gas, and the slightly heavier one to be a proposed element, coronium.
Mendeleev devoted much study and made important contributions to the determination of the nature of such indefinite compounds as solutions.
In another department of physical chemistry, he investigated the expansion of liquids with heat, and devised a formula similar to Gay-Lussac's lawof the uniformity of the expansion of gases, while in 1861 he anticipated Thomas Andrews' conception of the critical temperature of gases by defining the absolute boiling-point of a substance as the temperature at which cohesion and heat of vaporization become equal to zero and the liquid changes to vapor, irrespective of the pressure and volume.
Mendeleev is given credit for the introduction of the metric system to the Russian Empire.
He invented pyrocollodion, a kind of smokeless powder based on nitrocellulose. This work had been commissioned by the Russian Navy, which however did not adopt its use. In 1892 Mendeleev organized its manufacture.
Mendeleev studied petroleum origin and concluded hydrocarbons are abiogenic and form deep within the earth – see Abiogenic petroleum origin. He wrote  "The capital fact to note is that petroleum was born in the depths of the earth, and it is only there that we must seek its origin." (Dmitri Mendeleev, 1877)
A number of places and objects are associated with the name and achievements of the scientist.
In Saint Petersburg his name was given to the National Metrology Institute dealing with establishing and supporting national and worldwide standards for precise measurements. Next to it there is a monument to him pictured above that consists of his sitting statue and a depiction of his periodic table on the wall of the establishment.
In the Twelve Collegia building, now being the centre of Saint Petersburg State University and in Mendeleev's time – Head Pedagogical Institute – there is Dmitry Mendeleev's Memorial Museum Apartment with his archives. The street in front of these is named after him as Mendeleevskaya liniya (Mendeleev Line).
In Moscow, there is the D. Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology of Russia.
After him was also named mendelevium, which is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Md (formerly Mv) and the atomic number 101. It is a metallic radioactive transuranic element in the actinide series, usually synthesized by bombarding einsteinium with alpha particles.
A large lunar impact crater Mendeleev that is located on the far side of the Moon, as seen from the Earth, also bears the name of the scientist.
Russian Academy of Sciences yearly awards since 1998 Mendeleev Golden Medal