few months ago I went to Russia to the
city of Kazan the capital of the
Republic of Tatarstan where the element
ruthenium was discovered and sadly Brady
wasn't with me but it was really good I
went to visit the place where Klaus
discovered the element he built a
chemistry lab which is now a museum so
there's quite a lot of old equipment and
stuff inside they were still quite a lot
of snow about and we arrived went up the
steps and of course we were wearing
thick coats so we had to take off our
coats and things and then we were
ushered into the lecture theatre which
Klaus had built not a very big lecture
theater and to my surprise there was a
TV crew there waiting to interview me so
lots of periodic video cards were dished
out and I gave a short interview can't
remember what I said I don't think it
was very profound and then I was greeted
by a professor who spoke some English
but not terribly fast to told myths
about Klaus and Klaus originally was a
pharmacist making drugs medicines and
then he moved to Kazan as professor of
chemistry and this was his lecture
theatre and in pride of place is his
portrait there's quite a nice
marble-topped bench and behind an
old-fashioned blackboard on which I
actually wrote rather naughtily periodic
videos dot-com just so that the students
or other visitors might watch it
unfortunately just in chalk this
department was famous for a whole series
of professors who came after Klaus and
one of them was a chemist called Zenon
who was the first person to make
synthetic aniline
synthesized underlain from simpler
molecules and there's a terrific bust of
him made a marble with very long
moustache I think it must be bit
dangerous and then we went through into
an antechamber and then into a really
old lab which had fume cupboards that
had no fans because electric motors
hadn't been invented but instead had a
stove underneath and the draft from the
hot air going up the chimney flue was
enough to cause some suction and that
was really nice and there were pestles
and mortars and all sorts of old
equipment but the really exciting thing
was to go in where there was a display
case with rows and rows of samples new
compounds new elements that had been
made by all the different professors and
including those with three samples of
oxide fluoride and ruthenium metal
itself which had all been made by Klaus
apparently he noticed the presence of
this element when he was purifying some
ore from platinum and ruthenium oxide is
quite volatile and has a very
distinctive smell
and he actually smelt the elements
before he discovered it which is quite
an interesting take on how you discover
elements that's amazing yes there was
also in this cupboard there was the
first sample of aniline which aniline is
a very pair of pale yellow liquid but
it's gone off in the hundred and forty
years since then so it's now much darker
color but it still looked quite
impressive Zin Ian's original sample it
was a lovely cupboard and I could have
spent hours looking different samples
and if you've been there we could have
made a whole series of videos but
probably I didn't know enough about the
compounds to do all
them and then I was taken to sit at the
desk of one of the professors I don't
know whether it was Klaus his original
desk or had been put there just
afterwards but it felt really good to
sit there to hold the pen and be a
Russian professor