MENDELEEV, Dmitri Ivanovich (1834-1907). Autograph inscription signed '('D. Mendeleeff') to 'Mr le Professeur Rodrigues / homme de talent', on a printed copy of the period table, [envelope postmarked St Petersburg, 25 March 1888].

MENDELEEV, Dmitri Ivanovich (1834-1907). Autograph inscription signed \'(\'D. Mendeleeff\') to \'Mr le Professeur Rodrigues / homme de talent\', on a printed copy of the period table, [envelope postmarked St Petersburg, 25 March 1888].



Single sheet printed on both sides (204 x 132mm), pp. XV-XVI from the introduction of Mendeleev\'s Izsliedovanie vodnykh rastvorov po udiel\'nomu viesu. [Investigation of water \'solutions\' by specific gravity. St. Petersburg: 1887] (faint soiling and spotting, light staining at head), a few pencil emendations, presumably by Rodrigues; with Mendeleev\'s printed business card. Envelope addressed to Rodrigues in Brussels.



Presentation copy of Mendeleev\'s periodic table, inscribed to José Júlio Rodrigues, Professor of Chemistry at Lisbon Polytechnic. Dalton had been the first to organise chemical elements by weight, and had listed 21 elements in his New system of chemistry in 1808-1810. Mendeleev\'s great breakthrough had been to realise how to group the elements according to the principle of atomicity. His Principles of Chemistry, with the first publication of his periodic table, was conceived in 1865, after Mendeleev had been appointed to the chair of chemistry in the University of St. Petersburg. Finding there was no book he could recommend to his students as a text for his lectures, he set out to write his own, publishing in 1867.