Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev, born on February 8, 1834, was believed to be the youngest of 14 children. His father, Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleyev was a teacher at a local gymnasium. Around the time Dmitri was born, his father went blind and later died in 1847. Consequently to support the family, his mother Mariya Dmitriyevna Kornileva began working at a small glass factory in a nearby town, and eventually started managing it. On December of 1848, the factory burned down, and the family moved to St. Petersburg. There, Mendeleyev attended the Main Pedagogical Institute and graduated in 1855. He then traveled to the Ukraine, which was considered to be Southern Russia back then, and taught in the cities of Simferopol and Odessa. In 1856, he returned
