Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was born on February 7, 1834. He was the youngest of 14 children and everyone's favorite. Mendeleev was given every opportunity his mother could afford. As a young man he spent many hours in the glass factory run by his mother, learning the concepts behind glassmaking from the chemist who influenced him and the art of making glass from the glassblower. Another major influence in her life was Bessargin, her sister's husband. Bessargin took charge of teaching Dmitri the science of time. Mendeleev's early years were guided by these people, and so he was raised with three key thoughts: Bessargin's "Everything in this world is science", the glassblower's "Everything in the world is art", and "Everything in the world is love" , from his mother. Mendeleev knew from a young age that he wanted to study science and saw little need to study subjects such as Latin and history. He saw them as a waste of time. He subsequently passed his high school exams and prepared to enter university. He was allowed to take the entrance exams, which he passed, not with top marks, but well enough to be admitted to the science teacher training program on a full scholarship. He entered the university in the fall of 1850. He immediately devoted himself to work in St. Petersburg. His studies progressed rapidly into his third year. When he was struck by an illness that forced him to bed for a year. In Mendeleev's time the atom was considered the most elementary particle of matter. What Mendeleev and other chemists determined was the atomic weight of each element. How heavy were its atoms compared to a hydrogen atom. Mendeleev said: “I began to look around and write the elements... in the center of the paper... I wrote a formula similar to the Gay-Lussac law on the consistency of the expansion of gases. In 1861 he anticipated Thomas Andrews' conception of the critical temperature of gases by defining the absolute boiling point of a substance as the temperature at which cohesion and the degree of vaporization become zero and the liquid transforms into vapor, independently of the pressure and from the volume. Mendeleev accomplished many things. And he received numerous awards from various organizations including the Davy Medal of the Royal Society of England in 1882, the Copley Medal, the Society's highest award, in 1905, and honorary degrees from universities around the world. After his resignation from St. Petersburg University, the Russian government appointed him director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures in 1893. Mendeleev continued to be a popular social figure until his death.