What is the dream of the periodic table. Was Mendeleev's periodic system discovered in a dream? Chemistry and life of Otto Levi

Dmitri Mendeleev saw his table in a dream, and his example is not the only one. Many scientists admitted that they owe their discoveries to their amazing dreams. From their dreams, not only the periodic table came into our lives, but also the atomic bomb.

“There are no such mysterious phenomena that could not be understood,” said Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the great French scientist, philosopher, mathematician, physicist and physiologist. However, at least one inexplicable phenomenon was well known to him from personal experience. The author of many discoveries made during his life in various fields, Descartes did not hide the fact that the impetus for his versatile research was a few prophetic dreams he saw at the age of twenty-three.

The date of one of these dreams is known exactly: November 10, 1619. It was on that night that the main direction of all his future work was revealed to René Descartes. In that dream, he picked up a book written in Latin, on the very first page of which the secret question was displayed: “Which way should I go?”. In response, according to Descartes, “The Spirit of Truth revealed to me in a dream the interconnection of all sciences”.

How this happened, now one can only guess, only one thing is known for certain: the research, which was inspired by his dreams, brought fame to Descartes, making him the greatest scientist of his time. For three centuries in a row, his work had a huge impact on science, and a number of his works in physics and mathematics remain relevant to this day.

Surprisingly, dreams famous people that pushed them to make discoveries are not so rare. An example of this is the dream of Niels Bohr, which brought him the Nobel Prize.

Niels Bohr: visiting atoms

The great Danish scientist, the founder of atomic physics, Niels Bohr (1885-1962), while still a student, managed to make a discovery that changed the scientific picture of the world.

Once he dreamed that he was on the Sun - a shining clot of fire-breathing gas - and the planets whistled past him. They revolved around the Sun and were connected with it by thin threads. Suddenly, the gas solidified, the "sun" and "planets" shrank, and Bohr, by his own admission, woke up as if from a shock: he realized that he had discovered the model of the atom that he had been looking for for so long. The "sun" from his dream was nothing but a motionless core, around which the "planets" - electrons revolved!

Needless to say, the planetary model of the atom, seen by Niels Bohr in a dream, became the basis of all subsequent works of the scientist? She laid the foundation for atomic physics, bringing Niels Bohr the Nobel Prize and world recognition. The scientist himself, all his life, considered it his duty to fight against the use of the atom for military purposes: the genie, set free by his dream, turned out to be not only powerful, but also dangerous ...

However, this story is only one in a long line of many. So, the story of a no less amazing nocturnal insight that advanced world science forward belongs to another Nobel laureate, the Austrian physiologist Otto Levi (1873-1961).

Chemistry and life of Otto Levi

Nerve impulses in the body are transmitted by an electrical wave - so doctors mistakenly believed until the discovery made by Levi. While still a young scientist, for the first time he disagreed with venerable colleagues, boldly suggesting that chemistry is involved in the transmission of a nerve impulse. But who will listen to yesterday's student who refutes scientific luminaries? Moreover, Levy's theory, for all its logic, had practically no evidence.

It wasn't until seventeen years later that Levi was finally able to perform an experiment that clearly proved him right. The idea of ​​the experiment came to him unexpectedly - in a dream. With the pedantry of a true scholar, Levi recounted in detail the insight that visited him for two nights in a row:

“... On the night before Easter Sunday 1920, I woke up and made some notes on a piece of paper. Then I fell asleep again. In the morning I had the feeling that I wrote down something very important that night, but I could not decipher my scribbles. The next night, at three o'clock, the idea came back to me. This was the design of an experiment that would help determine whether my hypothesis of chemical transmission is valid ... I immediately got up, went to the laboratory and performed the experiment that I saw in a dream on a frog heart ... Its results became the basis of the theory of chemical transmission of a nerve impulse ".

The research to which dreams made a significant contribution brought Otto Levi the Nobel Prize in 1936 for services to medicine and psychology.

Another famous chemist, Friedrich August Kekule, did not hesitate to publicly admit that it was thanks to sleep that he managed to discover the molecular structure of benzene, over which he had unsuccessfully struggled for many years before.

Serpent Ring of Kekule

By his own admission, Kekule, for many years he tried to find the molecular structure of benzene, but all his knowledge and experience were powerless. The problem so tormented the scientist that sometimes he did not stop thinking about it night or day. Often he dreamed that he had already made a discovery, but all these dreams invariably turned out to be just the usual reflection of his daily thoughts and concerns.

So it was until the cold night of 1865, when Kekule dozed off at home by the fireplace and had an amazing dream, which he later described as follows: “Atoms jumped before my eyes, they merged into larger structures similar to snakes. As if spellbound, I followed their dance, when suddenly one of the "snakes" grabbed her tail and danced teasingly before my eyes. As if pierced by lightning, I woke up: the structure of benzene is a closed ring!

This discovery was a revolution for the chemistry of that time.

The dream impressed Kekule so much that he told it to his fellow chemists at one of the scientific congresses and even urged them to pay more attention to their dreams. Of course, many scientists would subscribe to these words of Kekule, and first of all, his colleague, the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev, whose discovery, made in a dream, is widely known to everyone.

Indeed, everyone has heard that Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev "peeped" his periodic table of chemical elements in a dream. However, how exactly did this happen? One of his friends spoke in detail about this in his memoirs.

The whole truth about Dmitri Mendeleev

It turns out that Mendeleev's dream became widely known with light hand A.A. Inostrantsev, a contemporary and acquaintance of the scientist, who once went into his office and found him in the most gloomy state. As Inostrantsev later recalled, Mendeleev complained to him that “everything came together in my head, but I can’t express it in a table.” And later he explained that he worked for three days in a row without sleep, but all attempts to put his thoughts into a table were unsuccessful.

In the end, the scientist, extremely tired, nevertheless went to bed. It was this dream that later went down in history. According to Mendeleev, everything happened like this: “I see in a dream a table where the elements are arranged as needed. I woke up, immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper - only in one place did it later turn out to be the necessary amendment.

But the most intriguing thing is that at the time when Mendeleev dreamed of the periodic system, the atomic masses of many elements were incorrectly established, and many elements were not studied at all. In other words, starting only from the scientific data known to him, Mendeleev simply could not have made his brilliant discovery! And this means that in a dream he received more than just an insight. The discovery of the periodic system, for which the scientists of that time simply did not have enough knowledge, can be safely compared with the foresight of the future.

All these numerous discoveries made by scientists during sleep make one think: either great people have dreams-revelations more often than mere mortals, or they simply have the opportunity to realize them. Or maybe great minds just think little about what others will say about them, and therefore do not hesitate to seriously listen to the clues of their dreams? The answer to this is the appeal of Friedrich Kekule, with which he concluded his speech at one of the scientific congresses: "Let's study our dreams, gentlemen, and then perhaps we will come to the truth!".

Trying in a dream to understand the meaning of some table or tables, dotted with letters, numbers, signs - in reality means: a) to get a lot of information that will not be easy to understand. B) remember what you really wanted to forget. C) to investigate a scientific problem or some business.

Dreaming "Table" in a dream

Maybe and bad dream. Make tables - you will have responsible cash calculations. How to improve the value of sleep? Imagine that all entries in the table are made neatly and correctly.

Dream Interpretation: what the Table is dreaming of

Seeing a lottery table in a dream is a joy. So you won something? Wonderful! What about the multiplication table? Is she a joy for you too?

Decoding and interpretation of sleep Table

Trying in a dream to understand the meaning of some table or tables, dotted with letters, numbers, signs - in reality it means. Dream table - get a lot of information that will not be easy to understand. Table - remember what you really wanted to forget. Table - explore the scientific ...

Dream Interpretation Table

Get into debt.

What the dream portends: Table

You will be entangled in your own lies.

If you had a dream - Table

See the table - to monetary calculations. Make up - you have to pay the bills.

No, it's not true. A popular legend says that Dmitry Mendeleev, resting after scientific work, suddenly saw in a dream a periodic table of chemical elements. The scientist, stunned by the dream, allegedly immediately woke up and in a fever began to look for a pencil in order to quickly transfer the table from memory to paper. Mendeleev himself treated this fascinating story with ill-concealed irony. He said about his table: “I’ve been thinking about it for maybe twenty years, but you think: I sat and suddenly ... it’s ready.”

Who is the author of the myth about the sleepy nature of Mendeleev's discovery?

Most likely, this bike was born at the suggestion of Alexander Inostrantsev, professor of geology at the University of St. Petersburg. In his numerous letters, he says that he was very friendly with Mendeleev. And once a chemist opened his soul to a geologist, telling him literally the following: “Obviously, I saw a table in a dream in which the elements were arranged as needed. I woke up and immediately wrote down the data on a piece of paper and fell asleep again. And only in one place did it require editing later. Later, Inostrantsev often retold this story to his students, who were very impressed with the idea that in order to make a great discovery, it was enough just to fall asleep deeply.

More critical listeners were in no hurry to accept the above anecdote on faith, since, firstly, Inostrantsev was never such a bosom friend of Mendeleev. Secondly, the chemist generally opened up to few people, he often joked with his friends, while doing this with a more than serious expression on his face, so that those around him often could not understand whether this or that phrase was seriously thrown or not. Thirdly, Mendeleev said in his diaries and letters that from 1869 to 1871 he made not one, but many edits in the table.

Were there scientists who made discoveries in their sleep?

Unlike Mendeleev, many foreign scientists and inventors not only did not disown, but, on the contrary, emphasized in every possible way that some kind of insight that descended on them in a dream helped them to make this or that discovery.

American scientist Elias Howe at the end of the 19th century, he worked on the creation of a sewing machine. Howe's first devices broke and spoiled the fabric - this was due to the fact that the needle eye was on the blunt side of the needle. The scientist for a long time could not figure out how to solve this problem, until one day he dozed off right above the drawings. Howe dreamed that the ruler of some overseas country, under pain of death, ordered him to make a sewing machine. The apparatus he created immediately broke down, and the monarch became furious. As Howe was led to the scaffold, he saw that the spears of the guards surrounding him had holes just below the point. Waking up, Howe moved the eye to the opposite end of the needle, and his sewing machine started working flawlessly.

German chemist Friedrich August Kekule in 1865, he dozed off in his favorite armchair by the fireplace and had the following dream: “Atoms jumped before my eyes, they merged into larger structures, similar to snakes. As if spellbound, I followed their dance, when suddenly one of the "snakes" grabbed its tail and danced teasingly before my eyes. As if pierced by lightning, I woke up: the structure of benzene is a closed ring!

Danish scientist Niels Bor in 1913 he dreamed that he found himself on the Sun, and the planets revolved around him at great speed. Impressed by this dream, Bohr created a planetary model of the structure of atoms, for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize.

German scientist Otto Levy proved that the nature of the transmission of a nerve impulse in the human body is chemical, and not electrical, as was thought at the beginning of the twentieth century. This is how Levy described his scientific research, which did not stop day or night: “... On the night before Easter Sunday 1920, I woke up and made some notes on a piece of paper. Then I fell asleep again. In the morning I had the feeling that I wrote down something very important that night, but I could not decipher my scribbles. The next night, at three o'clock, the idea came back to me. This was the design of an experiment that would help determine whether my hypothesis of chemical transmission is valid ... I immediately got up, went to the laboratory and set up an experiment on a frog's heart that I saw in a dream ... Its results became the basis of the theory of chemical transmission of a nerve impulse. For his contribution to medicine in 1936, Levy received the Nobel Prize. Two years later he emigrated from Germany, first to the UK and then to the USA. Berlin allowed the scientist to go abroad only after he donated the entire monetary reward to the needs of the Third Reich.

In the middle of the 20th century, an American scientist James Watson I saw in a dream two intertwining snakes. This dream helped him to be the first in the world to depict the shape and structure of DNA.

Let's figure it out and find out which of the speculation about the parent of the periodic table of elements is true and what is not.

Mendeleev Dmitry Ivanovich (1834-1907) - a great Russian scientist, chemist, physicist, teacher, public figure. In 1859, he discovered the periodic law, on the basis of which he created the periodic system of elements. He left behind over 500 scientific printed works, including the classic textbook "Fundamentals of Chemistry". In his works, the foundations of the theory of solutions are revealed, and an industrial method for the fractional separation of oil is proposed. He was the organizer and first director of the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures (1893).

Mendeleev was born into a large family. Mendeleev was born on January 27, 1834. He became 17 and the last child in the family. By the time of his birth, only two brothers and five sisters survived in the family. Father - Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev was the director of the Tobolsk gymnasium and schools of the Tobolsk district. Mother, Maria Dmitrievna, had her roots in an old, but impoverished merchant family. Ivan Pavlovich died in 1847, leaving the entire burden of responsibility on the shoulders of his wife. Despite this, she, being a strong, educated and intelligent woman, was able to take care of her children and give them a decent education.

Mendeleev studied well at the gymnasium. Actually this is not true. Dmitry Ivanovich hated the routine that reigned within the walls of the gymnasium and studied mediocrely. With particular zeal, he studied only in two subjects - mathematics and physics. For the rest of his life, a negative attitude towards the classical school remained in his soul. However, participation in the Main pedagogical institute Saint Petersburg at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, he knew the full power of education. Despite the fact that the first course was given to him with great difficulty, he graduated from the university with a gold medal. In the future, Dmitry Ivanovich became one of the best teachers in Russia.

Mendeleev stopped teaching at St. Petersburg University due to a conflict with the Minister of Education. In the spring of 1890, student riots broke out at the university. The students worked out a petition addressed to the Minister of Public Education Delyanov. It did not contain any revolutionary ideas, as some suggest, and was purely academic in nature. Mendeleev agreed to pass the petition to the minister on the condition that the students stop the riots that had arisen. However, the minister did not consider the petition, and answered Mendeleev rudely and tactlessly. As a result, the riots resumed. Dmitry Ivanovich could not endure such an attitude towards himself and students and submitted his resignation.

Mendeleev invented vodka. Mendeleev did not invent vodka. He wrote and defended his doctoral dissertation “Reasoning about the combination of alcohol with water”. Another controversial fact is the statement that Mendeleev proposed to produce vodka with a strength of 40 degrees. In fact, this figure is not traced in his writings. According to some sources, he suggested making vodka with a strength of 38 degrees, considering such a strength to be ideal. However, later this number was rounded up to 40.

The principle of constructing the periodic system was developed by Mendeleev in a dream. This common version, frankly, somewhat detracts from the merits of the great chemist. According to this version, Mendeleev invented and created the system in one day, and saw part of it during his daytime sleep. According to the memoirs of O.E. Ozarovskaya, once, when asked about the discovery of the periodic system, Mendeleev answered: “I’ve been thinking about it for maybe twenty years, and you think: I sat and suddenly ... it’s ready.” These words fully reveal the long-term thought process of creating the periodic system. Even if he saw something in a dream, it only means that the thoughts of a genius were working even at a time when his physical component was resting.

There is a lot of mysticism in the creation of the periodic system. Indeed, a brilliant discovery smacks of mysticism. Compiling the periodic table, Mendeleev arranged the elements in order of increasing atomic weight. Already on beryllium, it became clear that, according to the scientific data of that time, the table could not be obtained. And then it is really inexplicable: Mendeleev simply changed the atomic weight of beryllium and added an empty cell between titanium and calcium. He did this with almost a third of the table. As a result, the weight of uranium increased by as much as 4 times. This table not only systematized chemical elements, but also predicted the appearance of unknown elements. There is a feeling of something divine, but how can genius be explained?

Mendeleev was unhappy in his personal life. The first marriage of Dmitry Ivanovich really cannot be called happy. On April 29, 1862, he married Feozva Nikitichna Leshcheva. In this marriage, two children were born: son Volodya and daughter Olga. Mendeleev loved children very much, but his relationship with his wife was cold. As a result, she gave him complete freedom, provided that he retains the official marriage. At 43, Dmitry Ivanovich fell in love with 19-year-old Anyuta Pavlova. These relationships were very difficult in the early stages. Anyuta's father was against it and asked Mendeleev to leave his daughter alone. As a result, Anyuta was sent abroad, where Dmitry Ivanovich, losing his head, rushed after her. Divorce in those years was a very difficult process. To help the man of genius arrange his personal life and for the sake of maintaining Mendeleev's mental health, his friends Beketov N.N. and Ilyin N.P. asked his first wife for permission to divorce. After her consent and subsequent divorce, Dmitry Ivanovich had to wait another six years for a new marriage. To avoid this, he bribed the priest by paying him 10,000 rubles for his marriage to Anyuta (we note that his estate cost him only 8,000 rubles). This marriage turned out to be very successful. The couple got along well and understood each other perfectly. Daughter Lyuba, who appeared in this marriage, became the wife of A. Blok.

Mendeleev was engaged in the manufacture of suitcases. Indeed, despite his employment and achievements in many scientific fields, Dmitry Ivanovich was fond of bookbinding and made suitcases. In this regard, even funny things happened. They say that when, during the purchase of material in a store, the seller was asked: “Who is this?”. He replied, “Don't you know? This is the famous suitcase master Mendeleev.” It is also known that Mendeleev sewed his own clothes, considering the purchase uncomfortable.

Mendeleev lost his sight at the end of his life. In 1895, Mendeleev became blind as a result of cataracts. During these years, he was already in charge of the Chamber of Weights and Measures he created. It was a difficult time for such an active person. All business documentation was read aloud to him, the secretary wrote down orders. Thanks to two operations successfully carried out by Professor I.V. Kostenich, the cataract was removed and Mendeleev's vision returned.

Mendeleev was engaged only in science. Mendeleev had a wide range of knowledge and could influence people's minds. He put a lot of effort into the formation of industry and the Russian economy. In his writings, he proposed to reform the community, to introduce an artel organization of labor. Dmitry Ivanovich pays special attention to the oil industry. It was to get acquainted on this issue in 1876 that he was sent by the government to America. He studied the oil fields of Russia, Special attention focusing on the Caucasus. Part of his work is devoted specifically to oil refining. In addition, he dealt with the issues of the Donetsk coal basin and its rationalization. Thus, he had a great influence not only in the scientific field, but also in solving domestic economic issues in Russia ...

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As is known, some dreams play a decisive role in making fateful decisions. However, not only in personal life, but also in the life of science, dreams can rightly be said to make a real revolution. And the periodic system of elements seen during sleep by Mendeleev, in its completed form, is a vivid proof of this.

The outstanding Russian scientist and aristocrat Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev has long been interested in the basic elements of the universe, which, combined in various forms, make up the so-called physical matter. Evidence testifies that at the beginning of 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev was very close to discovering one of the fundamental laws of nature - the periodic law of chemical elements. However, without experimenting, he still could not arrange the chemical elements in such a way that each of them displayed changes in properties, depending on the increase in atomic weight.

As a result of this, being exhausted by hard work on solving the puzzle that had arisen, the scientist on the night of February 17, 1869, according to some sources, falling asleep right at the desktop, I saw in a dream the very table that I could not create in reality. Waking up, Mendeleev immediately sketched it, then checked the diagram and realized that this was exactly what he had been trying to prove for the past three days.

According to another version, Dmitry Ivanovich had this dream at a time when he was on vacation with his family. It was then, falling asleep to the sounds of chamber music, that Mendeleev saw a table of the main elements of the universe, which floated together, as if lining up in a progression of the musical series, having their own order and beauty.

Similar stories appear in many relevant books and magazines, including scientific papers, as well as the stories of chemistry teachers in schools and colleges. Millions of people believed and still believe in this story, not suspecting that in fact it may turn out to be nothing more than another myth.

First of all, it should be noted that Dmitry Ivanovich personally never mentioned the “wonderful dream” neither in a diary nor in letters addressed to his friends. There is, however, the testimony of his friend, a well-known geologist, professor at the University of St. Petersburg Inostrantsev, that once Mendeleev told him the following: “Obviously, I saw a table in a dream in which the elements were arranged as needed. I woke up and immediately wrote down the data on a piece of paper and fell asleep again. And only in one place it was required later editing. Later, Inostrantsev often told this story to his students as an example of the psychological impact of intensive work on the human brain. Apparently, it was Inostrantsev and his students who were the first to spread this myth.

However, Mendeleev never confirmed this fact in his communication with the press or other researchers. Moreover, some of his statements directly contradict the hypothesis that the table was created immediately. For example, answering a reporter's question about the origin of the periodic table, he said that he had been thinking about it for twenty-five years. Indeed, the scientist's colleagues recall that Dmitry Ivanovich worked on his creation continuously for several years, and even created several draft versions. By the way, Mendeleev continued to make adjustments to the table even after its official publication, which indicates that the table allegedly seen in a dream was not complete.

In addition, it should be noted that Mendeleev was far from the first scientist to propose such a table. In 1864, the German scientist Julius Lothar Meyer published his table, which contained 28 elements arranged in 6 columns according to their valency. This was followed in 1866 by an attempt by the English chemist John Alexander Newland to relate the properties of elements to their atomic weight. And although both ways to systematize the elements were later found to be incorrect, Mendeleev was familiar with the data of these tables, they were always before his eyes and served as a kind of guide in his work.

And yet the question remains why Mendeleev told Inostrantsev that he saw the final version of the table in a dream? If indeed such a conversation really took place, most likely the great chemist was just joking, while Inostrantsev took this story at face value. Everyone who was personally acquainted with Dmitry Ivanovich certainly noted that the scientist had a special manner of speech: no one could understand the true meaning of his words, whether they were said in jest or seriously. If this is so, then it turns out that Inostrantsev is not the author of the myth about the table seen by Mendeleev in a dream, and this is a fiction of Mendeleev himself. In this case, the question arises, why was this myth so popular? Perhaps because for many people who are far from science, the actual methods of constructing scientific theories are usually unknown. Mere mortals do not know what exactly scientists must do in order to make a discovery. However, everyone has heard of prophetic dreams. To a non-specialist, this order of things seems more natural and, accordingly, easier to believe in.

However, if we nevertheless assume that this whole story about a dream was not fiction, but nevertheless took place, then the development of events in real time could be as follows. On the eve of February 17, 1869, Mendeleev really worked on the desired table. His work was very intensive for a long time, but did not give the necessary results. Dmitry Ivanovich repeatedly mentioned the difficulties, however, he did not deny that he had already come to the most important conclusion that the atomic weight of elements should be the basis of systematization. In order to find the most rational form of the table of elements, he made cards, depicting on them the main characteristics of the properties of the 63 elements known at that time, and began to lay out card solitaire.

According to Inostrantsev, just before the discovery of the law, Mendeleev spent the whole night over the table he was looking for, but still, having not received the desired results, he quit his job with annoyance and, languishing with the desire to sleep, immediately fell asleep in his office.

Most likely, Mendeleev did not dream of the final version of the table, but only an image that, upon awakening, embodied in two incomplete tablets of elements, which later formed the basis of his grandiose discovery. However, it was after waking up that Dmitry Ivanovich clearly realized that he was on the right track.

Since Mendeleev had already raved about his discovery for a considerable period of time and dreamed of creating such a table where all the elements would take their place, his brain continued to work on this puzzle even during sleep. And most likely it was the dream that helped the scientist in some way to complete and structure his idea.

Research confirms that many hours of continuous work sometimes does not give the desired results, leading astray. However, during sleep, when our body is resting and fully recovering, the brain continues to work continuously on the tasks that it received during the day. At the same time, some data formatting is performed: all unnecessary information is swept aside, important data is structured, forming a logical chain. At the same time, there is an actualization of those data that for some reason were previously discarded or left without attention. Since no new information enters the brain during sleep, the accumulated data, thanks to the existing life experience, can be used in such a way as to solve problems that until recently, in the daytime, seemed unsolvable. And a similar situation in the case c Mendeleev is very well characterized by the phrase >.

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