VODKA AND THE PERIODIC TABLE

Having previously called Russia “mother of genius,” I am at a loss to single out one scientist, one composer, or one anything at all, at the expense of all the rest. Sure enough, I have my sentimental favorites here and there (usually more than one in each area of creativity), but when it comes to science, rules of sentimentality hardly ever apply, which makes it easier for me to come up with rankings of the greatest Russian scientists, based on strictly formal, rather than subjectively personal criteria. For me, there are two sets of such formal criteria, and the first one is chronological. The reader may have noticed the importance that I am attaching to the fact of chronological precedence in my treatment of the greatest American presidents in the Twilight section. By the same token, I have already honored the first great Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov in my entry A Native Russian Nugget in this Russian section.

My second formal criterion, particularly relevant to the Russian list of greats, is tied to the already profusely quoted Imya Rossiya project, where the initial selection of five hundred candidates was made by respectable members of the Russian academia, and the subsequent two-round public vote was monitored and effectively controlled by a body of responsible professionals. This doesn’t mean of course that the project was flawless, and various omissions, oversights, biases, etc. have been demonstrable. But at least some things were done right, and the otherwise strong possibility of weird flukes and intrusions of vulgar taste and mass ignorance and tastelessness, characteristic of similar European “Greatest” polls, was thus significantly reduced.

Well, according to the results of the Imya Rossiya poll, for whatever it is worth, the title of Russia’s greatest scientist goes to Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907), chemist, creator of the groundbreaking Periodic Table of Elements (1869), which was so superior to all previous scientific efforts at such classification, that it can be fully credited to the genius of Dmitri Mendeleev in a class by himself. No wonder that the Western history of science, which has never been generous to such Russian pioneers of science as, say, Yablochkov, or Popov, bows to Mendeleev’s creation as a no-contest case.

So far, so excellent, but there is far more to Mendeleev’s name and credit than the Periodic Table alone. His other contributions to chemistry, to physics, hydrodynamics, meteorology, and even economics, are great by themselves, and even without the Table would have brought him international fame. He is also known as an energetic champion of introducing the metric system to Russia, giving a huge impetus to the standardization process which harmonized Russian measurements with those accepted in most of Europe.

But there is one more achievement of his which makes a heck of a story and a treasure trove for trivia buffs and such. It starts with the popular Russian quasi-legend that Mendeleev “invented…vodka.”

Calling Mendeleev father of vodka is a huge stretch, of course, which stretches credibility beyond the limits of the acceptable. Vodka had existed in Russia since times immemorial and its actual “inventor” has to be a collective, and not a proper name.

And yet there’s some truth to the legend. In 1893 Mendeleev was appointed Director of the Russian Bureau of Weights and Measures, and one of his immediate responsibilities was to develop the official standard for vodka distillation. He diligently applied himself to the task, and in 1894 came up with such standard, which he determined as 38% by volume, equivalent to 76 Proof. Attention trivia buffs! Mendeleev considered this 38% to be the optimum number for vodka distillation, but the Russian authorities were dissatisfied with that number, allegedly for practical reasons. In order to count the tax on vodka distillers more easily, they needed a round number, and set their sights on the obvious round number 40%, which would from then on become the gold standard of vodka distillation. Whether or not Mendeleev willingly complied with the government-imposed round number is extremely unimportant. Having come up with the number 38%, all the rest would now be out of his hands.

Having nothing more illuminating to say on this subject, here is where my entry on Mendeleev, vodka, and the Periodic Table ends, take it or leave it.