A very popular Russian story credits Mendeleev with setting the 40% standard strength of vodka. For example, Russian Standard vodka advertises: "In 1894, Dmitri Mendeleev, the greatest scientist in all Russia, received the decree to set the Imperial quality standard for Russian vodka and the Russian Standard was born" Others cite "the highest quality of Russian vodka approved by the royal government commission headed by Mendeleev in 1894".
In fact, the 40% standard was already introduced by the Russian government in 1843, when Mendeleev was nine years old. It is true that Mendeleev in 1892 became head of the Archive of Weights and Measures in Saint Petersburg, and evolved it into a government bureau the following year, but that institution was charged with standardising Russian trade weights and measuring instruments, not setting any production quality standards. Also, Mendeleev's 1865 doctoral dissertation was entitled "A Discourse on the combination of alcohol and water", but it only discussed medical-strength alcohol concentrations over 70%, and he never wrote anything about vodka.