Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (; Russian: Михаи́л (Михáйло) Васи́льевич
Ломоно́сов, IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ləmɐˈnosəf] (listen); November 19 [O.S.
November 8] 1711 – April 15 [O.S. April 4] 1765) was a Russian polymath, scientist
and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. Among
his discoveries were the atmosphere of Venus and the law of conservation of mass in chemical
reactions. His spheres of science were natural science, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, history,
art, philology, optical devices and others. Lomonosov was also a poet and influenced the
formation of the modern Russian literary language.
== Early life and family == Lomonosov was born in the village of Mishaninskaya
(later renamed Lomonosovo in his honor) in Archangelgorod Governorate, on an island not
far from Kholmogory, in the far north of Russia. His father, Vasily Dorofeyevich Lomonosov,
was a prosperous peasant fisherman turned ship owner, who amassed a small fortune transporting
goods from Arkhangelsk to Pustozyorsk, Solovki, Kola, and Lapland. Lomonosov's mother was
Vasily's first wife, a deacon's daughter, Elena Ivanovna Sivkova.He remained at Denisovka
until he was ten, when his father decided that he was old enough to participate in his
business ventures, and Lomonosov began accompanying Vasily on trading missions.Learning was young
Lomonosov's passion, however, not business. The boy's thirst for knowledge was insatiable.
Lomonosov had been taught to read as a boy by his neighbor Ivan Shubny, and he spent
every spare moment with his books. He continued his studies with the village deacon, S.N.
Sabelnikov, but for many years the only books he had access to were religious texts. When
he was fourteen, Lomonosov was given copies of Meletius Smotrytsky's Modern Church Slavonic
(a grammar book) and Leonty Magnitsky's Arithmetic. On his religious views, Lomonosov was a Russian
orthodox all his life, but had close encounters with Old Believers schism in early youth and
later in life he became a deist.In 1724, his father married for the third and final time.
Lomonosov and his stepmother Irina had an acrimonious relationship. Unhappy at home
and intent on obtaining a higher education, which Lomonosov could not receive in Mishaninskaya,
he was determined to leave the village.
== Education in Moscow and Kiev ==
In 1730, at nineteen, Lomonosov went to Moscow on foot, because he was determined to "study
sciences". Shortly after arrival, he admitted into the Slavic Greek Latin Academy by falsely
claiming to be a son of a Kholmogory nobleman. In 1734 that initial falsehood as well as
another lie for him to be son of a priest nearly got him expelled from the academy but
the investigation ended without severe consequences.Lomonosov lived on three kopecks a day, eating only
black bread and kvass, but he made rapid progress scholastically. It is believed that in 1735,
after three years in Moscow he was sent to Kiev to study for short period at the Kyiv-Mohyla
Academy. He quickly became dissatisfied with the education he was receiving there, and
returned to Moscow to resume his studies there. In five years Lomonosov completed a twelve-year
study course and in 1736, among 12 best graduates, was awarded a scholarship at the St. Petersburg
Academy. He plunged into his studies and was rewarded with a four-year grant to study abroad,
in Germany, first at the University of Marburg and then in Freiberg.
== Education abroad == The University of Marburg was among Europe's
most important universities in the mid-18th century due to the presence of the philosopher
Christian Wolff, a prominent figure of the German Enlightenment. Lomonosov became one
of Wolff's students while at Marburg from November 1736 to July 1739. Both philosophically
and as a science administrator, this connection would be the most influential of Lomonosov's
life. In 1739–1740 he studied mineralogy, metallurgy, and mining at Bergrat Johann Friedrich
Henckel's laboratory in Freiberg, Saxony; there he intensified his studies of German
literature.
Lomonosov quickly mastered the German language, and in addition to philosophy, seriously studied
chemistry, discovered the works of 17th century Irish theologian and natural philosopher,
Robert Boyle, and even began writing poetry. He also developed an interest in German literature.
He is said to have especially admired Günther. His Ode on the Taking of Khotin from the Turks,
composed in 1739, attracted a great deal of attention in Saint Petersburg. Contrary to
his adoration for Wolff, Lomonosov went into fierce disputes with Henckel over the training
and education courses he and his two compatriot students were getting in Freiberg as well
as over very limited financial support which Henckel was instructed to provide to the Russians
after numerous debts they made in Marburg. As the result, Lomonosov left Freiberg without
permission and wandered for quite a while over Germany and Holland unsuccessfully trying
to get a permission from Russian envoys to return to the St.Petersburg Academy.During
his residence in Marburg, Lomonosov boarded with Catharina Zilch, a brewer's widow. He
fell in love with Catharina’s daughter Elizabeth Christine Zilch. They were married in June
1740. Lomonosov found it extremely difficult to maintain his growing family on the scanty
and irregular allowance granted him by the Russian Academy of Sciences. As his circumstances
became desperate, he resolved and got permission to return to Saint Petersburg.
== Return to Russia == Lomonosov returned to Russia in June 1741,
after being abroad 4 years and 8 months. A year later he was named an Adjunct of the
Russian Academy of Science in the physics department. In May 1743, Lomonosov was accused,
arrested, and held under house arrest for eight months, after he supposedly insulted
various people associated with the Academy. He was released and pardoned in January 1744
after apologising to all involved.Lomonosov was made a full member of the Academy, and
named Professor of chemistry, in 1745. He established the Academy's first chemistry
laboratory. Eager to improve Russia’s educational system, in 1755, Lomonosov joined his patron
Count Ivan Shuvalov in founding Moscow University.In 1760, he was elected a Foreign Member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1764, he was elected Foreign Member of the Academy
of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna 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.
He died on 4 April (o.s.), 1765 in Saint Petersburg. He is widely and deservingly regarded as the
"Father of Russian Science", though many of his scientific accomplishments were relatively
unknown outside Russia until long after his death and gained proper appreciation only
in late 19th and, especially, in 20th centuries.
=== Physicist ===
In 1756, Lomonosov tried to replicate Robert Boyle's experiment of 1673. He concluded that
the commonly accepted phlogiston theory was false. Anticipating the discoveries of Antoine
Lavoisier, he wrote in his diary: "Today I made an experiment in hermetic glass vessels
in order to determine whether the mass of metals increases from the action of pure heat.
The experiments– of which I append the record in 13 pages– demonstrated that the famous
Robert Boyle was deluded, for without access of air from outside the mass of the burnt
metal remains the same". That is the Law of Mass Conservation in chemical
reaction, which was well-known today as "in a chemical reaction, the mass of reactants
is equal to the mass of the products." Lomonosov, together with Lavoisier, is regarded as the
one who discovered the law of mass conservation.He stated that all matter is composed of corpuscles
– molecules that are "collections" of elements – atoms. In his dissertation "Elements of
Mathematical Chemistry" (1741, unfinished), the scientist gives the following definition:
"An element is a part of a body that does not consist of any other smaller and different
bodies ... corpuscle is a collection of elements forming one small mass." In a later study
(1748), he uses term "atom" instead of "element", and "particula" (particle) or "molecule" instead
of "corpuscle". He regarded heat as a form of motion, suggested
the wave theory of light, contributed to the formulation of the kinetic theory of gases,
and 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
laws of motion as well, for an object moving others by its own force in fact imparts to
another object the force it loses" (first articulated in a letter to Leonhard Euler
dated 5 July 1748, rephrased and published in Lomonosov's dissertation "Reflexion on
the solidity and fluidity of bodies", 1760).
=== Astronomer ===
Lomonosov was the first to discover and appreciate atmosphere of Venus during his observation
of the transit of Venus of 1761 in a small observatory near his house in Petersburg.In
June 2012 a group of astronomers carried out experimental reconstruction of Lomonosov's
discovery of Venusian atmosphere with antique refractors during the transit of Venus ( 5–6
June 2012). They concluded that Lomonosov's telescope was fully adequate to the task of
detecting the arc of light around Venus off the Sun's disc during ingress or egress if
proper experimental techniques as described by Lomonosov in his 1761 paper are employed.
In 1762, Lomonosov presented an improved design of a reflecting telescope to the Russian Academy
of Sciences forum. His telescope had its primary mirror adjusted at an angle of four degrees
to the telescope's axis. This made the image focus at the side of the telescope tube, where
the observer could view the image with an eyepiece without blocking the image. However,
this invention was not published until 1827, so this type of telescope has become associated
with a similar design by William Herschel, the Herschelian telescope.
=== Chemist and geologist === In 1759, with his collaborator, academician
Joseph Adam Braun, Lomonosov was the first person to record the freezing of mercury and
to carry out initial experiments with it. 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 catalogue of over 3,000 minerals, and in 1760, he explained
the formation of icebergs.In 1763, he published On The Strata of the Earth - his most significant
geological work.
=== Geographer === Lomonosov's observation of iceberg formation
led into his pioneering work in geography. Lomonosov got close to the theory of continental
drift, theoretically predicted the existence of Antarctica (he argued that icebergs of
the South Ocean could be formed only on a dry land covered with ice), and invented sea
tools which made writing and calculating directions and distances easier. In 1764, he organized
an expedition (led by Admiral Vasili Chichagov) to find the Northeast Passage between the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans by sailing along the northern coast of Siberia.
=== Mosaicist ===
Lomonosov was proud to restore the ancient art of mosaics. In 1754, in his letter to
Leonhard Euler, he wrote that his three years of experiments on the effects of chemistry
of minerals on their colour led to his deep involvement in the mosaic art. In 1763, he
set up a glass factory that produced the first stained glass mosaics outside of Italy. There
were forty mosaics attributed to Lomonosov, with only twenty-four surviving to the present
day. Among the best is the portrait of Peter the Great and the Battle of Poltava, measuring
4.8 by 6.4 metres (16 ft × 21 ft).
=== Grammarian, poet, historian === In 1755 Lomonosov wrote a grammar that reformed
the Russian literary language by combining Old Church Slavonic with the vernacular tongue.
To further his literary theories, he wrote more than 20 solemn ceremonial odes, notably
the Evening Meditation on the God's Grandeur. He applied an idiosyncratic theory to his
later poems – tender subjects needed words containing the front vowel sounds E, I, Y
and U, whereas things that may cause fear (like "anger", "envy", "pain" and "sorrow")
needed words with back vowel sounds O, U and Y. That was a version of what is now called
sound symbolism. In 1760 Lomonosov published a History of Russia.
In addition, he attempted to write a grand epic about Peter the Great, to be based on
the Aeneid by Vergil, but he died before he could finish it.
== Legacy ==
His granddaughter Sophia Konstantinova (1769–1844) married Russian military hero and statesman
General Nikolay Raevsky. His great-granddaughter was Princess Maria (Raevskaya) Volkonskaya,
the wife of the Decembrist Prince Sergei Volkonsky.The city of Lomonosov, Russia (former Oranienbaum,
Russia from 1710–1948), and a lunar crater bear his name, as does a crater on Mars and
the asteroid 1379 Lomonosowa. The Imperial Porcelain Factory, Saint Petersburg was renamed
after him from 1925 to 2005. In 1948, the underwater Lomonosov Ridge in the Arctic Ocean
was named in his honor. Moscow State University was renamed '’M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State
University'’ in his honor in 1940.The Lomonosov Gold Medal was established in 1959 and is
awarded annually by the Russian Academy of Sciences to a Russian and a foreign scientist.The
street "Lomonosova iela" in the Maskavas Forštate district of Riga is named in honor of Lomonosov.
During the Soviet era a main street in Tallinn, Estonia, was named in his honor as "Lomonossovi
M.", but from 1991 it was renamed Gonsiori after Jakob Johann Gonsior, a 19th-century
alderman and lawyer.The Akademik Lomonosov, the first of a series of Russian floating
nuclear power stations, is named for him. It is expected to be operational at Vilyuchinsk,
Kamchatka Peninsula, in 2018.
== Works == English translationsLomonosov, Mikhail (1767).
A Chronological Abridgement of the Russian History. Translated by J.G.A.F. for T.Snelling.
Lomonosov, Mikhail (1966). Panegyric to the Sovereign Emperor, Peter the Great. Translated
by Ronald Hingley in Marc Raeff, ed. Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology. Prometheus
Books. ISBN 978-0391009059. Lomonosov, Mikhail (1970). Mikhail Vasil'evich
Lomonosov on the Corpuscular Theory. Translated by Henry M. Leicester. Harvard University
Press. ISBN 0674574206. Lomonosov, Mikhail (2012). The Appearance
of Venus on the Sun, Observed at the St.Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences on May 26, 1761.
Translated by Vladimir Shiltsev in "Lomonosov's Discovery of Venus Atmosphere in 1761: English
Translation of Original Publication with Commentaries". arXiv:1206.3489.
Lomonosov, Mikhail (2012). On the Strata of the Earth. Translation and commentary by S.M.Rowland
and S.Korolev. The Geological Society of America, Special Paper 485. ISBN 978-0-8137-2485-0.
Lomonosov, Mikhail (2017). Oratio De Meteoris Vi Electrica Ortis - Discourse on Atmospheric
Phenomena Originating from Electrical Force (1753). Translation and commentary by Vladimir
Shiltsev. arXiv:1709.08847. Lomonosov, Mikhail (2018). Meditations on
Solidity and Fluidity of Bodies(1760). Translation and commentary by Vladimir Shiltsev. arXiv:1801.00909.German
translationsLomonossow, Michail (1961). Michail Wassiljewitsch Lomonossow. Ausgewählte Schriften
in zwei Bänden. Berlin-Akademie Verlag. Lomonosov, Michail (2015). Erste Grundlagen
Der Metallurgie Oder Des Huttenwesens (1763). Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Friedrich
Naumann. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3110424072. Lomonosov, Michail (2017). Schriften zur Geologie
und zum Berg- und Hüttenwesen (1742–1765). Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Friedrich
Naumann. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-042406-5.
== See also