Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/278

266 our atoms form distinct portions of an invisible world, as planets, satellites, and comets form distinct portions "of the astronomer's universe; our atoms may therefore be compared to the solar system, or to the systems of double or single stars. . . . Now that the indestructibility of the elements has been acknowledged, chemical changes can not be otherwise explained than as changes of motion, and the production by chemical reactions of galvanic currents, of light, of heat, or of steam-power, demonstrate visibly that the processes of chemical reaction are inevitably connected with enormous though unseen displacements, originating in the movements of atoms in molecules."

When, in 1880, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences refused, in the face of strongly signed recommendations, to elect Mendeleef a member in its Chemical Section, other scientific societies hastened to express their appreciation of him by making him an honorary member. Among these were the University of Moscow; the Russian Chemical and Physical Society, which presented him an address where it spoke of him as "a chemist who has no equal among Russian chemists"; the University of Kiev, the Society of Hygiene, etc. From England he received the Davy medal of the Royal Society in 1882, and the Faraday medal of the Chemical Society in 1889.

Prof. Mendeleef is the author of a treatise on Organic Chemistry which was a standard work in its time, and which, according to Prof. Thorpe, exercised a great influence in spreading abroad the conceptions which are associated with the development of modern chemistry. In 1863 he published a cyclopædia of chemical technology—the first really important work of the kind produced in Russia. He has frequently been commissioned to report on the progress of chemical industry as illustrated at the various international exhibitions. His investigations and reports on petroleum have been an important factor in the developing of the trade at Baku, and in removing the monopoly which formerly dominated the market there.

We quote again, in concluding, from Prof. Thorpe: "No man in Russia," he says, "has exercised a greater or more lasting influence on the development of physical science than Mendeleef. His mode of work and of thought is so absolutely his own, the manner of his teaching and lecturing is so entirely original, and the success of the great generalization with which his name and fame are bound up is so strikingly complete, that to the outer world of Europe and America he has become to Russia what Berzelius was to Sweden, or Liebig to Germany, or Dumas to France."