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2026-10-06 ru.wikisource.org: Russian original text of the essay

Site: https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Попытка_химического_понимания_мирового_эфира_(Менделеев) Run: Investigator (Step I), first run. Browser: Chrome. Raw wikitext saved as research/files/ru-wikisource-popytka-1902-text.wiki (action=raw, 184 KB).

What was searched

Google: "Попытка химического понимания мирового эфира" Менделеев pdf led here. Page read in full in Chrome (first 50,000 characters on screen; the rest from the saved wikitext).

What it is

[web] The Russian text of "Попытка химического понимания мирового эфира" (An attempt towards a chemical conception of the world ether), "created October 1902, published 1903". Footnote 1 of the page: first printed in the journal «Вестник и Библиотека Самообразования» (Herald and Library of Self-Education), 1903, Nos. 1-4; separate edition St Petersburg, Typolithography of M. P. Frolova, 1905, pp. 5-40 (Russian State Library record 01003728490). The Wikisource source is D. I. Mendeleev, «Периодический закон» (The Periodic Law), edited with article and notes by B. M. Kedrov, USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow 1958, pp. 470-517.

Findings that bear on the claims (all [web], URL above)

The Russian text (the 1905 revision) carries material that the English 1904 translation in the project folder does not. I checked the project's English text layer (_text/A-Chemical-Conception-Of-The-Ether-1-27f09c.txt) for "newtonium", "Errera" and "Yarkovsky" and found none.

  1. The name "newtonium" (claim 2). Footnote 19 (footnote 18 in the 1905 scan): "Мне бы хотелось предварительно назвать его «ньютонием» — в честь бессмертного Ньютона" (I would like provisionally to call it "newtonium", in honour of the immortal Newton). The English 1904 text uses only "x".
  2. Opening passage on the "trinity" of matter, force and spirit. The Russian opens with a philosophical paragraph: knowledge rests on an indivisible "trinity" of substance (matter), force (energy) and spirit, and modern "realism" means accepting that all three are eternal, evolve and are linked. The English 1904 text starts at the Larousse definition. This is the inventor's own framing of claim 5 (no primary matter; the ether is a substance).
  3. Mendeleev's motive goes back to the 1870s (claims 1 and 3). Footnote 5: "Уже с 70-х годов у меня назойливо засел вопрос: да что же такое эфир в химическом смысле?" (Since the 1870s the question has nagged at me: what is the ether in the chemical sense?). He says his low-pressure gas experiments were done to look for hints, and that he stayed silent until now.
  4. The ether may be a mixture (claim 1). Footnote 9: the world ether may not be one uniform gas but a mixture of several near-limiting gases, like the Earth's atmosphere. He treats it as one gas only to keep things simple.
  5. Priority for the zero group (claim 2). Footnote 14: the first mention of a zero group in the literature was by Errera, at the Belgian Royal Academy session of 5 March 1900 (Bulletin de la classe des sciences, 1900, p.160). Footnote 15: Ramsay told him the comparison of noble-gas atomic weights with the halogens and alkali metals in person, in Berlin on 19 March 1900, and later printed it in the Philosophical Transactions.
  6. Another contemporary ether-density estimate (claim 1, weight of the ether). Footnote 4: I. O. Yarkovsky, in the pamphlet «Плотность светового эфира» (The density of the luminiferous ether), Bryansk 1901, gives a different ether density from Kelvin's. Mendeleev says he saw it only after finishing the article and that what matters is "the effort to find it", which shows the ether is generally held to have weight.
  7. A possible light halogen (claim 2). Footnote 17: elements between H = 1.008 and He = 4 may exist. A halogen is the most likely, because only four halogens are known against five alkali metals.
  8. Ether piling up around the Sun as a source of solar energy (claims 3 and 4). Footnote 20: however light x is, more of it should collect around massive suns and stars than around planets. He asks whether this could help explain the Sun's excess energy output.
  9. Absolute zero doubted. Footnote 23: he sees accepting absolute zero (-273 degC) as a weak point of contemporary physics and plans a separate article on it. This bears on his choice of a -80 degC space temperature (claim 3).
  10. Expansion coefficient (claim 3). Footnote 24: according to Mendeleev and Kayander, hydrogen keeps an expansion coefficient of about 0.00367 from low pressures up to 8 atm. He says only this number can be used for the lightest gases such as x. This supports the deep read's finding that the English "0.000367" is a misprint for 0.00367.
  11. Cross-references to his textbook. Footnote 30: he stated "roughly the same thought" in footnote [68 bis] on p.183 of the first part of the 7th edition of «Основы химии» (Principles of Chemistry), issued September 1902. Footnote 31: radioactive substances are treated in the 8th edition (1906), supplement 565, with data to mid-1905.
  12. Corrections of names in the English text. The Russian names Mendeleev's 1874 co-worker as М. Л. Кирпичев (M. L. Kirpichev; the English has "Kirpitchnikoff"). The 1899 author on molecules escaping from planets is Роговский (Rogovsky; the deep read has "Rostovsky"). The volcanic-gas coronium claim is attributed to Nasini, Andreoli and Salvadori (1898), against "Nasini, Anderlini and Salvadori (1893)" in the English summary. Newton and Bessel's pendulum experiments are cited for weight without chemical attraction.

How it bears on the claims

It adds to the inventor's own statement of every central claim. The 1905 Russian edition has footnotes written after the 1904 English edition: they cite 1904 work on gas permeation through quartz and the 1906 8th edition. So the Russian text is the later and fuller statement of Mendeleev's own position. The names and dates in the English and Russian versions differ (item 12); the reviewers should use the Russian forms when citing people.