Background
Grigory Nikolayevich Vyrubov was born on October 13, 1843, in Moscow City, Russian Federation.
Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum
The S. M. Kirov Military Medical Academy
Building "Aptekarskij dom" on Red Square that housed Moscow University
Grigory Nikolayevich Vyrubov was born on October 13, 1843, in Moscow City, Russian Federation.
In 1862 Grigory Nikolayevich graduated from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, where he was deeply impressed by the talented teacher of French literature Edmond Nikolayevich Pommier, a student of Auguste Comte and a friend of Emil Littre. As a lyceum student, he attended lectures at the Medical and Surgical Academy (now S.M. Kirov Military Medical Academy). After graduating from the lyceum, Grigory Nikolayevich attended lectures at the medical and natural faculties of Imperial Moscow University.
In 1864, Grigory Nikolayevich received a Doctor of Philosophy in natural sciences, after which he permanently went abroad, returning to Russia only for a short time.
Grigory Nikolayevich founded the Positivist journal Philosophie positive with Emile Littré in 1867: he edited the journal until 1881. He befriended Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen, and edited anonymously the first edition of Herzen's works (10 vols, 1875-1879).
Although he had never trained as a historian of science, in 1903 Grigory Nikolayevich was elected as Pierre Laffitte's successor to the chair of the history of science at the Collège de France and held the chair until his death.
In 1896 Grigory Nikolayevich criticized Mendellev's notion and statement of a periodic law, i.e., "all the properties of bodies are periodic functions of their atomic weights," citing the inversion of tellurium and iodine, which breaks the order of monotonically increasing atomic weights. He went so far as to say "I think that it is time to show clearly that there is nothing here which merits the name of law or system." Rethinking periodicity in terms of atomic number eliminates the problem, and the criticism was beside the point since the notion of a periodic law had already saturated the field of chemistry.
Grigory Nikolayevich was an active freemason. He was initiated into freemasonry on 7 January 1874 in Paris. He was initially a member of the Scottish Rite, but came into conflict with the Grand Lodge of France and switched to the Grand Orient of France (French Rite). He was the "Worshipful Master" of a lodge of Russian emigrants known as the "Rose of the Perfect Silence."