Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin, American statesman¹, printer, scientist², inventor, and writer, was born³ about three hundred years ago in Boston, Massachusetts. At the time of his birth, 1706, Massachusetts was still a colony and the United States had not yet become an independent nation. At that time candles were used for lights in houses and Franklin's father was a candlemaker. Benjamin was the tenth of seventeen children. When he. was only ten years old he had to leave school⁴ to help his father.

Benjamin was not happy working in his father's candle shop, and so when he was thirteen his father sent him to Ben's elder brother where he became a printer. In these years he learned to write so well that he often wrote something for his brother's newspaper.

Franklin liked the work in the printing shop, but he did not get along very well with his brother⁵. At the age of seventeen⁶ he set out to make his own way in the world⁷. He went to New York, but not finding any work there, went to Philadelphia. He arrived there dirty and hungry.

Franklin began working in a printing shop in Philadelphia, but by 1729 he became the owner of a popular newspaper.

Franklin was greatly interested in electricity and is famous for flying a kite during a thunderstorm: thus he proved the connection of lightning with electricity. This was one of the many investigations, which won Franklin recognition⁸ as a scientist.

In Philadelphia Franklin founded⁹ the first public library in America. Franklin served his country¹⁰ as a statesman and as a diplomat. Benjamin Franklin died in 1790 when he was eighty-four years old.

Notes

^1statesman	– державний діяч;
^2scientist	– вчений;
^3was born	– народився;
^4to leave school	– закінчив школу;
^5to get along well with somebody	– бути в гарних стосунках, ладити з ким-небудь;
^6at the age of 17	– у віці 17 років;
^7to make one's own way in the world	– зробити кар’єру, завоювати повагу у суспільстві, отримати визнання;
^8investigations which won recognition	– дослідження, які принесли визнання, славу;
^9to found	– заснувати;
^10to serve one's country	– служити своїй країні.

D. I. Mendeleyev

D. I. Mendeleyev, the great Russian scientist, was born in Tobolsk in 1834. After finishing school at the age of 16 he went to St. Petersburg and entered the Pedagogical Institute. He graduated from the Institute in 1855. In 1866 Mendeleyev was appointed professor at the University where he gave a course of lectures on chemistry. His lectures were always listened to with great interest and attention. Even in a class of two hundred students everyone was able to follow his discussions from the beginning to the end.

Interesting experiments were made in his classes. Both he and his student-assistants worked long hours in preparing the demonstrations so that all would go well.¹

At the University Mendeleyev taught classes in the morning. In the afternoon he made experiments in his two-room laboratory. At night Mendeleyev spent much of his time working with the cards on which he put down information about each of the chemical elements.

Mendeleyev made thousands of experiments with his own hands. He made thousands of calculations, wrote a lot of letters, studied many reports. Everything in the world that was known about the chemical elements Mendeleyev knew. For months, for years he searched for missing data ² All those data were being brought together and grouped in a special way. In 1869 the description of more than 60 elements was completed, and Mendeleyev published his Periodic Table.

The Periodic Table is spoken of as the beginning of a new era in chemical thought.

In addition to this work Mendeleyev paid much attention to many subjects of an applied chemical nature He was the first to put forward the idea of studying the upper layers of the atmosphere.

Mendeleyev was elected member of many academies abroad. He died in February 1907 at the age of 75.

Notes

^1so that all would go well	– з тим, щоб усе було добре;
^2data	– інформація.