Dmitri Mendeleev

Dmitri Mendeleev was born in Tobolsk, Siberia, the youngest of many children. His father, a teacher, went blind and died, and his mother ran a glass factory until it burned down. Determined that her son be educated, she took him thousands of miles to Moscow and then St. Petersburg, where he was admitted to study science; she died soon after. Mendeleev became a professor of chemistry at the University of St. Petersburg. While writing a textbook, he looked for a way to organize the sixty-three elements then known. In 1869 he arranged them in order of atomic weight in a table where elements with similar properties fell into the same columns. Most boldly, he left gaps for elements not yet discovered and predicted their properties. When gallium, scandium and germanium were found in the following years with properties close to his predictions, his periodic table was widely accepted. He also studied gases, solutions and petroleum, and worked to modernize Russian industry and agriculture. He later directed Russia's bureau of weights and measures. He died in 1907. Element 101, mendelevium, is named for him.

Faith: Raised an Orthodox Christian; his grandfather was a Russian Orthodox priest. His adult beliefs are not well documented. Source: Wikipedia