Who Was Mikhail Lomonosov?
Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (19 November 1711 – 15 April 1765) was a Russian polymath — chemist, physicist, mineralogist, poet, historian, and educator — who is generally regarded as the founder of Russian science and of modern Russian literary language. He played a central role in the founding of Moscow University, which carries his name, and in the design of the system of state education in the Russian Empire. He was the first Russian member of most of the European academies of his time.
Early life
Lomonosov was born in 1711 in the village of Denisovka (later Lomonosovo) on the White Sea coast, near Kholmogory in the far north of Russia. The son of a prosperous Pomor (White Sea) fisherman, he learned to read from the local clergy and from the Slavonic and Latin grammars that he borrowed from neighbours. In 1730, at the age of 19, he left his father’s house and walked to Moscow, where he was admitted to the Slavic Greek Latin Academy, a state school for the sons of minor clergy and poorer nobles.
In 1736, Lomonosov was sent to the University of Marburg in Germany to study with the philosopher Christian Wolff, and in 1738 he moved to Freiburg to study chemistry and mining. In 1741 he returned to Russia, having failed to win a position abroad. He was admitted to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1742 and was made professor of chemistry in 1745.
Science
Lomonosov’s scientific work ranged across an enormous territory. He is best known for his theory of matter, which he developed in opposition to the prevailing phlogiston theory, and for his statement, anticipating Lavoisier by some years, that mass is conserved in chemical reactions. He carried out careful experiments on the behaviour of gases, on the nature of heat, on the composition of mineral salts, and on the freezing of mercury. He made important observations on the aurora borealis and on the atmosphere of Venus.
He founded the first Russian chemical laboratory, in St. Petersburg in 1748, and wrote the first Russian textbook of chemistry. He also worked on the theory of mineralogy, on the technology of glass and mosaics, and on the geography of the Russian north.
Literature and the Russian language
In literature, Lomonosov is the author of the Russian Grammar of 1755, the first systematic Russian grammar, and of the Preface to a Russian Grammar, in which he laid out the theory of the three styles of Russian — high, middle, and low — that shaped the development of the Russian literary language for the next century. He wrote odes and longer poems, and he reworked the Russian system of versification, replacing the Polish-derived syllabic system with a syllabotonic one closer to that of the modern European languages.
Moscow University
In 1755, on the initiative of Lomonosov and Elizabeth of Russia, the Empress Elizabeth issued a decree founding the University of Moscow. The university was conceived as a centre for the education of the Russian nobility, and was the first university in Russia open to students of non-noble and non-clerical origin. It was housed initially in a former pharmacy on Red Square, and was later moved to its present site on the Mokhovaya. The university carried Lomonosov’s name from 1940.
The legacy of Lomonosov
Lomonosov is one of the most universally honoured figures in Russian culture. A street in Moscow, the Moscow State University main building, a research institute, a polar research base, and a lunar crater bear his name. The 18th-century Russian literary tradition that runs through Derzhavin, Karamzin, and ultimately Pushkin is conventionally regarded as having its foundation in the work of Lomonosov. The Russian Academy of Sciences, of which he was a founding member, continues to honour him as one of its principal figures.