Dmitri Mendeleev Biography | Animated Video | Formulator of the Periodic Law

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was born to Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev and Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleev on February 8, 1834, in Verkhnie Aremzyani close to Tobolsk, Siberia. Mendeleev was the last child of his parents 17 children and was raised as an Orthodox Christian.
Mendeleev's father who was a teacher became blind, losing his teaching job as a result, this plunged the family into poverty. His mother had to start working, and also rebuilt the abandoned glass factory owned by the family. But greater calamity befell the family when Mendeleev was 13, his father died, and the factory was destroyed by fire.
Due to the family’s misfortune, in 1894, his mother took Mendeleev and his brother to Moscow and tried to enrol him at the Moscow University, but he was not accepted into the school. He then tried to get admitted into his father’s alma mater at St. Petersburg, causing the family to relocate to St. Petersburg.