Remembering Mendeleev’s Centenary: Spain Issues …€¦ · Remembering Mendeleev’s Centenary: Spain Issues the First Stamp ... Prof. Pascual Román Polo was instrumental in getting

PHILATELIA CHIMICA ET PHYSICA, VOL. 29, NO. 3 — SUMMER 2007 132

Remembering Mendeleev’s Centenary: Spain Issues the First Stamp

Dedicated to the Periodic Table

Javier García-Martínez Molecular Nanotechnology Laboratory

Department of Inorganic Chemistry University of Alicante, Carretera San Vicente s/n, 03690 Alicante, Spain

e-mail: [email protected]

As described in a paper published recently in Anales de Química –the official

journal of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry– (cover page shown in Figure 1) [1],

Spain has relatively few stamps on Science and Technology. This started to change in

2005, when Correos de España (Spanish Mail) decided to start issuing each year two

stamps related to science under a new Serie Ciencia (Science Series). Still a low number if

compared to the bulk of all the stamps issue by Spain every year. In fact, until the stamp

dedicated to Mendeleev Periodic Table issued recently and described herein, there was

only one Spanish stamp clearly related to Chemistry. This is the 1983 “Bicentenario del

descubrimiento del Wolframio” stamp that celebrates the 200 years of the discovery of the

element wolfram (i.e., tungsten) by the Delhuyar brothers (see Figure 2).

Prof. Pascual Román Polo was instrumental in getting the Mendeleev stamp issued.

He is very active in promoting Chemistry in Spain and he has published several books on

the History of Chemistry, including a book on the Delhuyar brothers [2] and another on

Mendeleev [3]. Recently, Prof. Román Polo co-organized the 1st Spanish Congress on the

History of Chemistry (Logroño, La Rioja, September 13-15, 2006). During this Congress, a

task force on the Mendeleev Year was created. Because of these and other activities, Prof.

Román Polo was contacted by the Spanish Mail to suggest names of great scientists that

deserve to be honored with a stamp. He had little doubt when he suggested Mendeleev

for 2007.


Figure 1. Cover page of the January-March 2007 issue of the official journal of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemisty, Anales de Química. This issue contains the review paper on both Spanish philately related to Chemistry and a comparative study on the international philately dedicated to Mendeleev.


Figure 2. First stamp issued by Spain related to Chemistry, on the occasion of the second centenary of the discovery of the element wolfram by the Delhuyar brothers.

Towards the end of 2006, Prof. Román Polo contacted me about the possibility to

design a stamp to celebrate Mendeleev on the year of the centenary of his death. From

the outset, it was clear to me that this would be a great opportunity to give a modern and

positive image of Chemistry. At that time, I was working with Prof. Juan Manuel Salas

Peregrín on a review article on philately dedicated to Mendeleev [1]. I wanted my design

to be radically different. I used Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) art as inspiration because the

colorful box-like designs of his paintings are very suitable to design a new version of the

Periodic Table with bright plain colors, thick black borders, and simple forms. I selected

the colors of each block from the ones display at the webelements webpage [4], an icon

of a modern, online Periodic Table with thousands of hits per day. My version of the

Periodic Table includes four void spaces corresponding to the elements whose existence

was predicted by Mendeleev: ekaboron (scandium), ekaaluminum (gallium), ekasilicon

(germanium) and ekamanganese (technetium). This is intended to celebrate Mendeleev’s

genius for ordering the known elements and predicting the existence of new elements and

even their properties with amazing accuracy, which allowed for an early confirmation of

his Periodic Law. An early draft version of the described Periodic Table is shown in Figure


3. My goal was to catch the attention of stamp users and collectors alike with a colorful,

highly geometric design. The stamp contains also hidden codes to be discovered,

teaching lessons, and, above all, a profound tribute to Mendeleev.

Figure 3. One of the Periodic Table draft designs inspired by Mondrian´s art for the stamp “Tabla Periódica de Elementos de Mendeléiev”. The final stamp includes a simplified version of this design.

Although the Periodic Table (or some portions thereof) is shown in some stamps, as

the ones related to Mendeleev [1], to my knowledge, the stamp herein described is

probably the only one ever dedicated to the Periodic Table. Remarkably, this is also the

first stamp dedicated to Mendeleev by a Western country. Although there is a relatively

large number of stamps honoring famous chemists issued by countries like Germany,

Great Britain, France, Sweeden, and the USA, only “Soviet” countries, namely the USSR

(1934, 1951, 1957 and 1969), Poland (1959), Bulgaria (1984), and the Democratic

People's Republic of Korea (1984), have issued stamps on Mendeleev, and all of them

before the fall of the Berlin wall (November 9, 1989). Although Mendeleev died well

before the October Revolution (October 25, 1917), politics excluded him from Western

philately for 100 years after his death!


The Year 2007 has been declared by the Spanish Congress as the Year of Science

[5]. This happens 100 years after Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev´s death in Saint Petersburg

on February 2, 1907. Among the activities planned for the year, the Spanish Mail issued

the first 5 millions copies of the stamp “Tabla Periódica de Elementos de Mendeléiev” on

February 2nd, 2007, exactly a century after Mendeleev’s death, with a face value of 0.30

euros (first class mail) (Figure 4) [6].

Figure 4. Stamp “Tabla Periódica de Elementos de Mendeléiev” issued by the Spanish Mail on February 2nd, 2007.

On the eve of its emission, the stamp was officially presented in the Residencia de

Estudiantes in Madrid, Spain, on February 1st, 2007. The Ministro de Interior (Minister of

Home Affairs), Dr. Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the Director of Spanish Mail, Dr. José

Damián Santiago Martín, and the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry President, Prof.

Nazario Martín León, attended the presentation of the Mendeleev stamp (Figures 5 and 6).


Figure 5. The Ministro de Interior (Minister of Home Affairs), Dr. Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba (center), cancelling a first day cover with the special postmark issued for the official presentation of the stamp, following the instructions given by the Director of Spanish Mail, Dr. José Damián Santiago Martín (left), under the attention of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry President, Prof. Nazario Martín León (right).

Figure 6. The Ministro de Interior (Minister of Home Affairs), Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, congratulates the stamp designer.


For this occasion, Spanish Mail issued a special postmark (emission eve’s postmark)

that was used during the ceremony on 3,000 special covers. The next day, a different

postmark (first day postmark) was used in letters sent from Madrid and Barcelona. Figure

7 shows covers cancelled with the presentation and the first day of issue postmarks.

Figure 7. First day covers cancelled with the postmarks used during the presentation of the stamp on the emission’s eve (top) and the first day of issue postmark (bottom).


Acknowledgments

The author thanks Prof. J.M. Salas Peregrín and Prof. P. Román Polo for useful suggestions.

References

[1] J. García-Martínez, J. Salas Peregrín, An. Quim. 103(1), 50-57 (2007).

[2] P. Román Polo, Los hermanos Delhuyar, la Bascongada y el Wolframio, Ed. Real

Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País. Comisión de Vizcaya, Bilbao (2000).

[3] P. Román Polo, El profeta del orden químico, Ed. Nivola, Tres Cantos, Madrid (2002).

[4] Webelements webpage: http://www.webelements.com/

[5] Spanish Year of Science webpage: http://www.ciencia2007.es/WebAC2007/

[6] The emission of this stamp has been highlighted in Webements Chemistry Nexus:

http://www.webelements.com/nexus/node/1169

Remembering Mendeleev’s Centenary: Spain Issues …€¦ · Remembering Mendeleev’s Centenary: Spain Issues the First Stamp ... Prof. Pascual Román Polo was instrumental in getting

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