Dmitri Mendeleev was the youngest of at least 14 children in his family. They lived in Tobolosk, Siberia. His father, Ivan, was the director of a gym and his mother, Marya, came from a family that introduced glass and paper making to Siberia. Mendeleev's father died while he was still young, and Marya had to work. Luckily, her family was able to get her a manager's position at the Korniliev glass factory at Aremziansk.
             Dmitri was educated at his father's gym in Tobolosk, where he showed a high interest in physics and mathematics. Also, he was taught many things about glass and glass blowing from the family factory. His brother-in-law, Bessargin, taught Mendeleev about current science topics.
             When Mendeleev was 14, his mother had already noticed his gifted abilities in Science and wanted to help him get a good education. All that changed when the family factory burnt down.
             Within a few months, Dimitri's mother and sister had died from tuberculosis.
             Mendeleev's most significant accomplishments were his discovery of periodic law and the making of the periodic table. He had a great interest in the elements, which up to his time were distinguished by only one basic property, which had been proposed by John Dalton in 1805, that each element has a characteristic atomic weight.
             Mendeleev wrote the elements out on cards, atoms had their atomic weights and were set out in columns in order of atomic weight. He was unclear what to do with hydrogen, the lightest, and left it out.
             Scientists had identified over 60 elements by Mendeleev's time. (Today over 110 elements are known.) In Mendeleev's day the atom was considered the most basic particle of matter. The building blocks of atoms (electrons, protons, and neutrons) were discovered only later. What Mendeleev and chemists of his time could determine, however, was the atomic weight of each element: how
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