he became ill and was bedridden for one year. During this year, Dmitri continued his studies by having professors and fellow students visit him and give him assignments, etc. Dmitri managed to graduate on time and was awarded the medal of excellence for being the first in his class.Dmitris illness did not improve and the doctors told him that he would have a maximum of two years left to live if he moved to a warmer climate. Dmitri had many goals for his future, so trying to extend his life as long as possible, he moved to Simferopol in the Crimean Peninsula near the Black Sea in 1855. At 21 years of age, Dmitri became the chief science master at the local school. This move to the south highly improved his condition and began regaining health to the point where doctors could no longer find any signs of disease in his body.In 1856, Dmitri returned to St. Petersburg to defend his masters thesis: Research and Theories on Expansion of Substances Due to Heat. After this, Dmitri focused his career on teaching and research. Dmitri was devoted to two things: First, his work and his students. Second, his country and his fellow men. His first love led him to write many books and to organize the periodic table, while the other gave rise to the studies of chemical technology and the organization of Russias industries, agriculture, transport, meteorology, and metrology. (Makers of Chemistry. p. 267.) In 1859, the Minister of Public Instruction assigned him to travel to study and develop scientific and technological innovations. Between 1859 and 1861, Dmitri studied the densities of gases with Regnault in Paris and then he studied the workings of the spectroscope with Kirchoff in Heidelberg. Later, Dmitri went on to study capillarity and surface tension. This led to his theory of an absolute boiling point, which we know now as critical temperature. While studying in Heidelberg, Dmitri made an acquaintance with A.P. Borodin, a chemist who achieved gre...
