Bancroftiana, Number 119 Fall 2001: Bancroft's 500,000th Book: Mendeleyev's Introduction to the Period Table of Elements

Bancroft's 500,000th Book: Mendeleyev's Introduction to the Period Table of Elements

The publication in St. Petersburg, Russia, 1868-1871, of Dmitry Mendeleyev's masterful textbook on chemistry introduced his seminal conception of the periodic relationship among the nuclear elements, laid out neatly as what we now know as the Periodic Table. The original edition is extremely rare, with no copies recorded in the National Union Catalog, nor in the OCLC and RLIN bibliographic data bases. The two copies recorded in United States libraries (University of Michigan and New York Public Library) were both incomplete, and that at Michigan was reportedly discarded. Thus the complete copy donated in Spring 2001 by Kenneth and Dorothy Hill is an acquisition of major significance and one eminently suited to mark two occasions: the 500,000th book added to The Bancroft Library, and the 30 millionth book acquired by the University of California.

On Monday, May 7, 2001, University of California President Richard C. Atkinson presented an honorary citation to Kenneth and Dorothy Hill for "longstanding generosity to libraries of the UC system." In his remarks, President Atkinson pointed out, "The University of California library collection is surpassed in the United States only by that of the Library of Congress. Generous donors like Kenneth and Dorothy Hill are helping to make the collection an unequaled resource for scholars and researchers who work with original documents to expand and advance knowledge."

The commitment of the Hills to teaching and research at the University of California has long extended beyond the borders of any individual library or campus. Kenneth and Dorothy Hill have assisted with the purchase of numerous books and manuscripts for the libraries at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego. They donated two major collections to the UC San Diego library, one on early Pacific exploration and discovery and the other on early meteorology.

The Hills also have endowed fellowship funds that provide annual study support to UC graduate students and in 1993 endowed the position of the University Librarian at UC Berkeley.

In presenting the Mendeleyev work, Kenneth and Dorothy Hill have provided new access to a landmark in the development of science, a major addition to The Bancroft Library's strong collections of history of science and technolgoy. The work is a two-volume textbook of chemistry written by Dmitry Ivanovic Mendeleyev (sometimes transliterated Mendeleev). Mendeleyev was born in 1834, and was the Russian chemist who developed the periodic classification of the elements.

Mendeleyev was the 17th and last child of the director of the gymnasium at Tobolsk. In 1855 he qualified as a teacher, winning a gold medal for his academic achievements.

Mendeleyev's original periodica table.

In 1859 the government sent him for further study to the University of Heidelberg. His study of molecular cohesion was begun at this time, and while at Heidelberg he attended the celebrated Karlsruhe conference (September 1860) and made valuable contacts with French chemists and with the Italian chemist Stanislao Cannizzaro, whose insistence on the distinction between molecular and atomic weights influenced Mendeleyev considerably.

Mendeleyev returned to St. Petersburg in 1861. Since he could not find a textbook that met his needs, he set about writing his own: the result was The Principles of Chemistry (1868-70), a classic textbook.

In writing the book, Mendeleyev explored deeply the properties of elements as he devised a way of classifying them. Mendeleyev's formulation of the periodic law, which permitted the observation of the relationships among the elements that previously had been studied only in isolation. The periodic table of elements had gaps, which Mendeleyev predicted would be filled by elements not yet discovered; three were discovered within 20 years, and they possessed the properties he had predicted. In time the table became a cornerstone of modern understanding of radioactive decay and atomic theory.

Mendeleyev died in 1907, and saw his text book go through many editions, but without doubt, his most significant and lasting contribution was the creation of the periodic table. The two-volume work of the first edition includes the first published version of the periodic table, a fold-out that looks remarkably like the periodic table most of us have come to know.

—Peter E. Hanff
Special Projects, The Bancroft Library