Respected by the official classes in Russia, the police did not interfere with his laboratory, for he would not allow them—although university and other laboratories in Russia are under the control of the police.
Although of humble origin, by his loyalty to the house of Romanof, and his well-known political views, he enjoyed privileges which were denied to many of his fellow-professors and students.
Through influence, capitalists and others, Mendeléeff became rich, bought an estate near Moscow, and became scientific adviser to the Minister of Finance. He was a thrifty man, and disliked society—society was a bore to his philosophic brain and to his love of solitude. Scarcely any branch of chemistry is there, practical or philosophical, which his genius has not touched and adorned.
While he was engaged in writing the first edition of his celebrated Principles of Chemistry in 1868-70, the periodic law occurred to him, and in March 1869 he presented his views on the subject to the Physico-Chemical Society of Russia. His fame rests, and will rest for all time, on the famous periodic law of the elements. John Dalton had shown at the commencement of the nineteenth century that the elements of matter, when reduced to their smallest and indivisible forms, or atoms, combine in certain definite proportions, depending upon their weights. From Dalton's time onward some of the best
