person
Dmitri Mendeleev
Mendeleev
also: Менделеев, Менделеевы, D. I. Mendeleev
Russian chemist (1834-1907), famous for the periodic table; invoked here in the generic plural ("the Mendeleevs") as a stand-in for scientific men of Sixte's type, in Chekhov's rhetorical contrast between scientists and the truly depraved -- "poets, abbots, and persons who assiduously attend the embassy churches."
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 7 May 1889. Sumy. §6 it is not the Sixtes and the Mendeleevs
Dmitri Mendeleev ("Менделеевы," plural), the Russian chemist famous for the periodic table, invoked generically here ("the Mendeleevs") as a stand-in for real scientific men of Sixte's type, paired rhetorically with the fictional Sixte in Chekhov's contrast between scientists and the truly depraved.