Mendeleev-D: Investigator site log

Run 1: 2026-10-06 (first run; no earlier sites.md). Time limit 10 minutes. Web searching and browsing took about 7 minutes wall clock (date +%s 1791322096 to about 1791322525). Chrome was used for all browsing. archive.org and the Wikipedia raw text were queried with curl, because the archive.org search page rendered no readable text in Chrome.

Keywords tried

• "Попытка химического понимания мирового эфира" Менделеев pdf
• Mendeleev ether "newtonium" coronium zero series 1902
• Менделеев ньютоний эфир нулевой ряд короний таблица
• habr "Из чего состоит мировой эфир" Менделеев
• "подлинная таблица" Менделеев 1906 нулевой элемент Родионов
• site:ether-wind.narod.ru Менделеев
• "Versuch einer chemischen Auffassung des Weltäthers" Mendelejew
• Bensaude-Vincent 1982 "L'éther, élément chimique" Mendéléev British Journal for the History of Science
• Музей-архив Менделеева рукопись "мирового эфира" короний Рамзай письмо
• Antropoff 1926 "element zero" neutronium Zeitschrift für angewandte Chemie periodic table
• "Основы химии" 1906 восьмое издание таблица нулевая группа x y скан РГБ
• rusneb site search: Попытка химического понимания мирового эфира
• archive.org advancedsearch: title:(prometheus) AND date:[1902-01-01 TO 1905-12-31]; title:(prometheus) AND title:("15. Jahrgang") AND title:(735 OR 736 OR 737 OR 738 OR 739); title:(naturwissenschaftliche rundschau) AND date:[1903-01-01 TO 1905-12-31]; mendeleeff ether; title:(основы химии) AND creator:(менделеев); title:(osnovy khimii); mendeleev principles of chemistry 1905

Not yet tried, for next run: - Kirpichev / Кирпичев 1874 Boyle law; Каяндер (Kayander) - Ярковский «Плотность светового эфира» 1901 - Errera 1900 "groupe zéro" Bulletin Académie royale de Belgique - "Вестник и библиотека самообразования" 1903 - Tschulok Prometheus 1903 Nr 736 - Mendeleev Dewar letter 1902 Belfast; Mendeleev Curie visit spring 1902 - coronium Fe XIV Grotrian Edlén 1939-1942 - van Spronsen "Mendeleev as a speculator" - Kedrov «Периодический закон» 1958 commentary

Leads for review

1. The inventor's own work

• The Russian original, 1903 journal and 1905 revised edition (all claims). Russian text on Wikisource [web: ru.wikisource.org, see research/2026-10-06-ru-wikisource.md] and a scan of the 1905 St Petersburg edition (censor date 7 Aug 1905) [web: ether-wind.narod.ru/Mendeleev_1905/; research/files/Mendeleev-1905-Popytka-StPetersburg-Frolova-scan.pdf]. It contains material missing from the English 1904 copy in the project:
• the name "newtonium" for x ("in honour of the immortal Newton") (claim 2);
• the opening on the "trinity" of matter, force and spirit (claim 5);
• the question has occupied him "since the 1870s", and his low-pressure gas work was aimed at it (claims 1 and 3);
• the ether may be a mixture of several limiting gases (claim 1);
• ether piling up around massive suns might explain the Sun's excess energy (claims 3 and 4);
• he doubts absolute zero (the -80 degC space temperature, claim 3);
• Mendeleev and Kayander's expansion coefficient 0.00367, which confirms the English "0.000367" is a misprint (claim 3);
• a possible light halogen between H and He (claim 2).
• German translations in his lifetime (claims 1-3):
• Prometheus XV (1903), translated by S. Tschulok, Zürich, with the note that the original was finished at the end of October 1902 and printed in January 1903 [web: archive.org/details/dbc.wroc.pl.20090; Nr 735, 737, 738 saved; Nr 736 missing].
• Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau 19 (1904), Nr 22-23, which uses "Newtonium" [web: archive.org/details/naturwissenschaf19brau].
• Per Lente, the German alone says x = 0.17 came "from a second-order parabola".
• Third English printing: Principles of Chemistry, 3rd English ed. (1905), vol. 2, Appendix III. The preface says that giving the ether "a chemical dress" serves "the cause of unity in natural philosophy" [web: archive.org/details/ThePrinciplesOfChemistryAnAttemptTowardsTheChemicalConceptionOfAether].
• Textbook cross-references not yet obtained: Основы химии 7th ed. (Sept 1902), footnote [68 bis] p.183 (an early statement of the idea); 8th ed. (1906), pp. 432-433 and supplement 565 (radioactivity to mid-1905). Whether the 8th edition's periodic table prints x and y decides the "genuine 1906 table" dispute (see 4).

2. Supporting information by others

• I. O. Yarkovsky, «Плотность светового эфира» (The density of the luminiferous ether), Bryansk 1901. Cited by Mendeleev as an independent Russian ether-density estimate (claim 1, the ether has weight). Not yet located.
• Errera (Belgian Royal Academy, 5 March 1900) and Ramsay (in person, Berlin, 19 March 1900) are credited by Mendeleev with the zero group and the noble-gas placement (claim 2). These support the zero group, not the ether element.
• No replication or experimental test of an element lighter than hydrogen was found this run.

3. Closely related work

• Lente (2019), ChemTexts 5:17 (open access): a mainstream chemist's reconstruction of the x and y extrapolations (geometric series for y; parabola or finite differences for x = 0.17). He calls the predictions failures and gives Mendeleev's opposition to Prout's hypothesis as a personal motive. That is Lente's characterization (claims 2, 3 and 6). PDF saved.
• Later "element zero" and sub-hydrogen proposals: Antropoff's neutronium (1926), with a new ZAAC paper "100 Years of Element Zero" (June 2026); nebulium (1898); protofluorine (Habr, 2022). Einstein 1922 ("Ether and relativity") and Dirac 1951 ("Is there an aether?") are cited by Lente as later ether discussions.
• Modern advocates of an ether:
• V. A. Atsyukovsky ("General etherodynamics"; ether-wind.narod.ru). He says the zero row with "newtonium" was "later removed" from the table.
• V. G. Rodionov, «Место и роль мирового эфира в истинной таблице Д. И. Менделеева», ЖРФМ (about 2002). He claims a "genuine 1906 table" with a zero row. Both are advocates' claims, recorded as theirs.

4. Historical record

• Publication chain:
• Oct 1902: written.
• Jan 1903: Вестник и Библиотека Самообразования Nos. 1-4.
• 1903: Prometheus (German).
• 1904: Longmans English translation (project copy) and Naturwiss. Rundschau abstract.
• 1905: Frolova brochure and Principles of Chemistry Appendix III.
• 1906: Основы химии 8th ed.
• 1910: Frolova reprint (NSU library snippet).
• 1958: Kedrov edition. The essay was widely printed in Mendeleev's lifetime.
• "Removed from the table" (absence-of-evidence question). Russian alternative-science sources claim that the zero row (ether) was deleted after 1907. Competing explanations to set out:
• (a) the hypothesis was abandoned after relativity (1905), the Moseley atomic numbers (1913) and the Bohr atom (1913), as Lente and ru.wikipedia say;
• (b) the advocates' claim of deliberate removal or falsification. Records that would decide it: the 8th edition (1906) table, and the 9th edition (1927, posthumous) and later Soviet editions, to see when and with what editorial note x and y disappeared. Kedrov's 1958 commentary is likely to discuss this. Note: ru.wikipedia says even the 1905 essay's tables lacked x and y. The project's English page images (pp.32, 34) and Habr's photo of the 1905 table show x and y, so that statement is contradicted by the primary scan.
• Artifacts:
• the 1905 brochure and table are in the Polytechnic Museum, Moscow (ru.wikipedia photo caption);
• the RGB record is 01003728490;
• the Mendeleev Museum-Archive (St Petersburg University) was not found online.
• Name corrections from the Russian text, for the reviewers:
• Mendeleev's 1874 co-worker is M. L. Kirpichev (English "Kirpitchnikoff");
• the 1899 author is Rogovsky (deep read "Rostovsky");
• coronium in volcanic gas is credited to Nasini, Andreoli, Salvadori (1898).