What city did Mendeleev's family move to when he entered the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1850?

Mendeleev’s family moved to Saint Petersburg when he entered the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1850. The move was part of his mother Maria Dmitrievna’s determined effort to secure him a scientific education.

After Mendeleev finished at the gymnasium in Tobolsk, Maria took him west across Russia. They first tried Moscow, but he was not admitted to Moscow University. They then continued to Saint Petersburg, where he entered the science department of the Institute’s physics-and-mathematics faculty.

The journey was especially significant because the family had already suffered the loss of Mendeleev’s father and the destruction of its glass factory by fire. Saint Petersburg was then the Russian Empire’s major intellectual and scientific center. Mendeleev studied there from 1850 to 1855, graduating with distinction and beginning the career that eventually led to the periodic law.