For his part, Mendeleev scanned Leon de Boisbaudran’s data on gallium and told the experimentalist, with no justification, that he must have measured something wrong, because the density and weight of gallium differed from Mendeleev’s predictions. This betrays a flabbergasting amount of gall, but as science philosopher-historian Eric Sherri put it, Mendeleev always “was willing to bend nature to fit his grand philosophical scheme.” The only difference between Mendeleev and crack pottery is that Mendeleev was right: Leon de Boisbaudran soon retracted his data and published results that corroborated Mendeleev’s predictions.

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness