Despite the occasional tidyings-up, chemistry by the second half of the nineteenth century was in something of a mess, which is why everybody was so pleased by the rise to prominence in 1869 of an odd and crazed-looking professor at the University of St. Petersburg named Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev.
尽管偶尔有人整理一番，直到19世纪末叶，化学在一定程度上仍处于混乱状态。因此，当俄罗斯圣彼得堡大学的一位模样古怪而又不修边幅的教授跻身于显赫地位的时候，人人都感到很高兴。那位教授的名字叫德米特里•伊凡诺维奇•门捷列夫。

Mendeleyev (also sometimes spelled Mendeleev or Mendeléef) was born in 1834 at Tobolsk, in the far west of Siberia, into a well-educated, reasonably prosperous, and very large family—so large, in fact, that history has lost track of exactly how many Mendeleyevs there were: some sources say there were fourteen children, some say seventeen. All agree, at any rate, that Dmitri was the youngest. Luck was not always with the Mendeleyevs. When Dmitri was small his father, the headmaster of a local school, went blind andhis mother had to go out to work. Clearly an extraordinary woman, she eventually became the manager of asuccessful glass factory. All went well until 1848, when the factory burned down and the family was reduced to penury. Determined to get her youngest child an education, the indomitable Mrs. Mendeleyev hitchhiked with young Dmitri four thousand miles to St.Petersburg—that’s equivalent to traveling from Londonto Equatorial Guinea—and deposited him at the Institute of Pedagogy. Worn out by her efforts, she died soon after.
1834年，在遥远的俄罗斯西伯利亚西部的托博尔斯克，门捷列夫生于一个受过良好教育的、比较富裕的大家庭。这个家庭如此之大，史书上已经搞不清究竟有多少个姓门捷列夫的人：有的资料说是有14个孩子，有的说是17个。不过，反正大家都认为德米特里是其中最小的一个。门捷列夫一家并不总是福星高照。德米特里很小的时候，他的父亲——当地一所小学的校长——就双目失明，母亲不得不出门工作。她无疑是一位杰出的女性，最后成为一家很成功的玻璃厂的经理。一切都很顺利，直到1848年一场大火把工厂烧为灰烬，一家人陷于贫困。坚强的门捷列夫太太决心要让自己的小儿子接受教育，带着小德米特里搭便车跋涉4000多公里（相当于伦敦到赤道几内亚的距离）来到圣彼得堡把他送进教育学院。她筋疲力尽，过不多久就死了。