Background

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was born on November 19, 1711, in Denisovka (later renamed as Lomonosovo), Russia, to Vasily Dorofeyevich Lomonosov and Elena Ivanovna Sivkova.

His father was a peasant fisherman who had grown rich transporting goods from Arkhangelsk to settlements in the far north. His mother, the daughter of a deacon, died when he was very young, but not before she had taught him to read. From the age of ten, he accompanied his father on voyages to learn the business.

Education

In 1730, determined to study, Lomonosov ran away from home and walked over 1 000 kilometers to Moscow. Claiming to be the son of a provincial priest, he was able to enroll in the Slavic Greek Latin Academy, where he studied for five years before being sent on to Saint Petersburg's Academic University.

In 1736, he was a select group of outstanding students sponsored by the Academy of Sciences to study mathematics, chemistry, physics, philosophy and metallurgy in Western Europe.

Lomonosov spent three years at the University of Marburg as a personal student of the philosopher Christian Wolff, then a year studying mining and metallurgy in Saxony, and a further year traveling in Germany and the Low Countries.

Career

Due to a lack of funds to support his young family, Lomonosov returned to Saint Petersburg at the end of 1741 and was immediately appointed adjunct to the physics class at the Academy of Sciences. In 1745 he became the Academy's first Russian-born Professor of Chemistry, and in 1748 the first chemical research laboratory in Russia was built for him.

Throughout his career at the Academy, Lomonosov was a passionate advocate for making education in Russia more accessible to the lower ranks of Russian society. He campaigned to give public lectures in Russian and for the translation into Russian of more scientific texts. In this, he found himself in conflict with one of the founders of the Academy, the German ethnologist Gerhard Friedrich Miller (whose views on the importance of Scandinavians and Germans in Russian history Lomonosov also hotly disputed). By composing and presenting at an official Assembly of the Academy in 1749 his ode to the Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, Lomonosov gained considerable favor at court and a powerful ally in his pedagogical endeavors in the form of Elizaveta's lover, Count Ivan Shuvalov. Together, Lomonosov and Shuvalov founded Moscow University in 1755. It was also thanks to Shuvalov's influence that the Empress granted Lomonosov a manor and four surrounding villages at Ust-Ruditsa, where he was able to implement his plan to open a mosaic and glass factory, the first outside Italy to produce stained glass mosaics.

By 1758, Lomonosov's responsibilities included overseeing the Academy's Geography Department, Historical Assembly, University, and Gymnasium, the latter of which he again insisted on making open to lowborn Russians. In 1760, he was appointed a foreign member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, and in 1764 he was similarly honored by the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna. The same year, he was granted by Elizaveta Petrovna the rank of State Councillor. He died April 4, 1765, and was buried in the Lazarev Cemetery of Saint Petersburg's Alexander Nevsky Monastery.

Much of Lomonosov's work was unknown outside Russia until many years after his death, and even now it is more the extraordinary breadth of his inquiry and understanding, rather than any specific grand advancements in a particular field, that make him such a seminal figure in Russian science. Among the highlights of his academic career were his discovery of an atmosphere around Venus, his assertion of the Law of Conservation of Mass (nearly two decades before Antoine Lavoisier), and his development of a prototype of the Herschelian telescope. In 1764, he arranged the expedition along the northern coast of Siberia that discovered the Northeast Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. His works also contained intuitions of the wave theory of light and the theory of continental drift. He made improvements to navigational instruments and demonstrated the organic origin of soil, peat, coal, petroleum, and amber. Without knowledge of Da Vinci's work, he developed a working prototype of a helicopter.

He wrote the first guide to rhetoric in the Russian language, and his Russian Grammar was among the first to codify the language. His Ancient Russian History compared the development of Russia to the development of the Roman Empire, a theme that would become increasingly popular in the 19th century. His poetry was much praised during his lifetime, although it has been largely ignored by posterity.

Achievements

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  Mikhail Lomonosov was an expert in diverse fields, such as geology, physics, literature, geography, and chemistry. He gave much importance to the development of the education system in Russia and founded the first Russian chemical laboratory at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences along with the establishment of the Moscow University. As a result of his studies, he explained the phenomenon of icebergs, challenged certain previous scientific theories like the phlogiston theory as well as published theories like the law of mass conservation.
  
  Lomonosov is remembered in central Saint Petersburg in the names of Ulitsa Lomonosova ("Lomonosov Street"), Ploshchad Lomonosova ("Lomonosov Square"), and the adjacent bridge across the Fontanka River. During the Soviet Period, his name was given to the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, and hence to the nearby metro station, Lomonosovskaya. The Soviets also renamed the suburban town of Oranienburg as Lomonosovo. In 1986, a magnificent monument to Lomonosov was unveiled in front of the Twelve Colleges, the main campus of Saint Petersburg State University, acknowledging the enormous debt that institution owes the great polymath who is rightfully considered the father of Russian science.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • The complete set of works of Mikhail Lomonosov. The 6th Part 2015
  • Sochineniia. Volume 2 1923
  • Zapiski po russkoy istorii 2003
  • Stihotvoreniya 1985

• Other Work

  • Histoire De La Russie: Depuis L'Origine De La Nation Russe, Jusqu'À La Mort Du Grand-Duc Jaroslaws Premier 1923

Religion

Lomonosov was an enlightened Russian Orthodox who regarded God as a "wise clock-master."

Politics

Lomonosov's political views have not yet been the subject of serious scientific study. However, in 1764, Lomonosov was appointed to the position of the State Councillor which was of Rank V in the Russian Empire's Table of Ranks.

Views

Lomonosov suggested the wave theory of light, he contributed to the formulation of the kinetic theory of gases.

He stated the idea of conservation of matter in the following words: "All changes in nature are such that inasmuch is taken from one object insomuch is added to another. So, if the amount of matter decreases in one place, it increases elsewhere. This universal law of nature embraces the laws of motion as well -an object moving others by its own force in fact imparts to another object the force it loses."

He was also the first to hypothesize the existence of an atmosphere on Venus based on his observation of the transit of Venus of 1761.

Believing that nature is subject to regular and continuous evolution, he demonstrated the organic origin of soil, peat, coal, petroleum, and amber. In 1745, he published a catalog of over 3,000 minerals.

As a geographer, Lomonosov got close to the theory of continental drift, theoretically predicted the existence of Antarctica, and invented sea tools which made writing and calculating directions and distances easier.

He applied an idiosyncratic theory to his later poems - tender subjects needed words containing the front vowel sounds E, I, YU, whereas things that may cause fear (like "anger," "envy," "pain" and "sorrow") needed words with back vowel sounds O, U, Y - an early version of what is now called sound symbolism.

Lomonosov developed the atomic-molecular conception of substance structure. During the domination of the teplorod theory, he asserted that heat is caused by the movement of corpuscles. Lomonosov formulated the principle of matter and movement conservation. He excluded phlogiston from chemical agents and laid the basis of physical chemistry. Lomonosov examined atmospheric electricity and gravity. He put forward the color doctrine. He created a number of optical devices. During a transit of Venus across the Sun on May 26, 1761, Lomonosov discovered that Venus possessed an atmosphere. He described the structure of Earth, explained the origin of treasures of the soil and minerals, and published a manual on metallurgy. He emphasized the importance of the North Sea route in the research and development of Siberia. A supporter of deism, he materialistically examined natural phenomena.

Quotations: "Nature uncovers the inner secrets of nature in two ways: one by the force of bodies operating outside it; the other by the very movements of its innards. The external actions are strong winds, rains, river currents, sea waves, ice, forest fires, floods; there is only one internal force-earthquake."

"Geometry is the rules of all mental investigation."

Membership

Lomonosov was a member of the prestigious Academy of Arts at Saint Petersburg. In 1761, he was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

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  Foreign Member

  Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

  1761

• Academy of Arts at Saint Petersburg

Personality

Although Lomonosov was a man of immense talent, his creative energies were somewhat thwarted by his domineering nature and quarrelsome disposition.

Interests

• Reading, poetry

• Music & Bands

  Classical music

Connections

While in Marburg, Lomonosov fell in love with and married his landlady's daughter, Elizabeth Christine Zilch.

Father:

Vasily Dorofeyevich Lomonosov

Mother:

Elena Ivanovna Sivkova

Spouse:

Elizabeth Christine Zilch

opponent:

Gerhard Friedrich Miller

References

• The Invention of Mikhail Lomonosov: A Russian National Myth
  2013
• Famous People: Mikhail Lomonosov Biography
  2020