Dmitri Mendeleev was not a prophet in Russia because the Tsar did not like his liberal politics. He was not elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences, but in the rest of the world his name was magic.
Creator of the Periodic Table – Famous everywhere except Russia
Dmitri Mendeleev was not a prophet in Russia because the Tsar (the emperor of Russia) did not like his liberal politics. He was not elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences, but in the rest of the world his name was magic.
The discovery of Teflon
The discovery of Teflon, a polymer chemically known as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), was sheer coincidence, and yet a revolutionary one. The man behind the discovery was an American chemist named Dr Roy J. Plunkett (1910–1994), who was then working for DuPont, an American chemical company. In the year 1938, Dr Plunkett was conducting a coolant gas …