Mikhail Lomonosov

Mikhail Lomonosov

Portrait by G. Prenner, 1787
Native name Михаил Васильевич Ломоносов
Born Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov
(1711-11-19)19 November 1711
Denisovka, Archangelgorod Governorate, Russia
Died 15 April 1765(1765-04-15) (aged 53)
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Nationality Russian
Fields Natural science, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, history, philology, poetry, optics
Institutions St. Petersburg Academy
Alma mater Slavic Greek Latin Academy
St. Petersburg Academy
University of Marburg
Academic advisors Christian Wolff
Spouse Elizabeth Christine Zilch

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (/ˌlɒməˈnɔːsɔːf, -sɒf/;[1] Russian: Михаи́л Васи́льевич Ломоно́сов; IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ləmɐˈnosəf]; 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 Mass Conservation 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 Denisovka (later renamed Lomonosovo in his honor) in Archangelgorod Governorate, on an island not far from Kholmogory, in the far north of Russia.[2] 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.[2] Lomonosov's mother was Vasily's first wife, a deacon's daughter, Elena Ivanovna Sivkova.[3]

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.[3]

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.[3] 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.[4] On his religious views, Lomonosov was a deist.[5][6]

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 Denisovka, he was determined to leave the village.[7]

Education in Moscow and Kiev

The Lomonosov house in Marburg

In 1730, at nineteen, Lomonosov went to Moscow on foot, because he was determined to study.[7] Not long after arriving, Lomonosov obtained admission into the Slavic Greek Latin Academy by falsely claiming to be a priest's son.[8] That initial falsehood would nearly get him expelled from the academy a few years later when discovered.[9]

Lomonosov lived on three kopecks a day, eating only black bread and kvass, but he made rapid progress scholastically.[10] After three years in Moscow he was sent to Kiev to study for one year at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He quickly became dissatisfied with the education he was receiving there, and returned to Moscow several months ahead of schedule, resuming his studies there.[10] He completed a twelve-year study course in only five years, graduating at the top of his class. In 1736, Lomonosov was awarded a scholarship to St. Petersburg Academy.[11] He plunged into his studies and was rewarded with a two-year grant to study abroad at the University of Marburg, in Germany.[12]

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 personal students while at Marburg. Both philosophically and as a science administrator, this connection would be the most influential of Lomonosov's life. Between 1739–1740 he studied mineralogy, metallurgy, and mining at Bergrat Henckel's laboratories in Freiberg, Saxony; there he intensified his studies of German literature.[13]

The most grandiose of Lomonosov's mosaics depicts the Battle of Poltava.

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.[13]

During his residence in Marburg, Lomonosov boarded with Catharina Zilch, a brewer's widow.[14] He fell in love with Catharina’s daughter Elizabeth Christine Zilch. They were married in June 1740.[15] Lomonosov found it extremely difficult to maintain his growing family on the scanty and irregular allowance granted him by the Russian Academy of Science. As his circumstances became desperate, he resolved to return to Saint Petersburg.[13]

Return to Russia

Lomonosov returned to Russia in 1741. A year later he was named adjutant to the Russian Academy of Science in the physics department.[13] 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.[13]

Lomonosov was made a full member of the Academy, and named professor of chemistry, in 1745.[13] He established the Academy's first chemistry laboratory.[16] Eager to improve Russia’s educational system, in 1755, Lomonosov joined his patron Count Ivan Shuvalov in founding Moscow University.[16]

In 1761, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1764, Lomonosov was appointed to the position of secretary of state. He died one year later in Saint Petersburg. Most of his accomplishments were unknown outside Russia until long after his death.

Physicist

Catherine II of Russia visits Mikhail Lomonosov in 1764. 1884 painting by Ivan Feodorov

In 1756, Lomonosov tried to replicate Robert Boyle's experiment of 1673.[17] 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

Scheme of the Lomonosov-Effect during a transit of Venus.

Lomonosov was the first person to hypothesize the existence of an atmosphere on Venus based on his observation of the transit of Venus of 1761 in a small observatory near his house in Petersburg.[13][18]

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).[19] 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[20] are employed.[21]

Diagrams from Mikhail Lomonosov's "The Appearance of Venus on the Sun, Observed at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences on 26 May 1761"

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.[22]

Chemist and geologist

Lomonosov was the first person to record the freezing of mercury. 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.[13]

In 1763 he published On The Strata of the Earth - his most significant geological work.[23]

Geographer

Lomonosov's observation of iceberg formation led into his pioneering work in geography. Lomonosov got close to the theory of continental drift,[24] 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),[25] 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.[13]

Mosaicist

Grave of Lomonosov in Lazarev Cemetery, Alexander Nevsky Lavra, Saint Petersburg

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 × 6.4 meters.[26][27][28]

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 (the first ever?).[29] 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.[30]

Legacy

1992 Russian gold coin

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.[31]

A lunar crater bears his name, as does a crater on Mars. 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.[32]

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.[33]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ↑ "Lomonosov". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  2. 1 2 Menshutkin 1952, p. 11.
  3. 1 2 3 Menshutkin 1952, p. 12.
  4. ↑ Menshutkin 1952, p. 13.
  5. ↑ Galina Evgenʹevna Pavlova; Aleksandr Sergeevich Fedorov (1980). Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov: his life and work. Mir. p. 161. The atheistic direction of Lomonosov's scientific and artistic creativity was not always consistent. His world outlook, just as that of many other representatives of the age of enlightenment, possessed elements of deism according to which God, having created the universe, assumed no control over its development which was governed by the laws of nature. Lomonosov's deism was no chance factor. As Karl Marx aptly put it, deism was the most convenient and easiest way for many materialists of the 17th-18th centuries to abandon religion.
  6. ↑ Andrew Kahn (2008). Pushkin's Lyric Intelligence. Oxford University Press. p. 130. ISBN 9780191552939. No atheistic conclusions spring from 'The Orb of Day has Set' to reverse Lomonosov's deism, but the poem still intrudes a painful gap between man and nature.
  7. 1 2 Menshutkin 1952, p. 15.
  8. ↑ Menshutkin 1952, p. 16.
  9. ↑ Menshutkin 1952, p. 20.
  10. 1 2 Menshutkin 1952, p. 17.
  11. ↑ Menshutkin 1952, p. 23.
  12. ↑ Menshutkin 1952, p. 24.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Menshutkin 1952.
  14. ↑ Pavlova, Galina E., and Fedorov, Aleksandr S. Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov: His Life and Work (English Translation). Mir: Moscow, 1980.
  15. ↑ Pavlova, Galina E., and Fedorov, Aleksandr S. Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov: His Life and Work (English Translation). Mir: Moscow, 1980. ISBN 0-8285-2895-0, ISBN 978-0-8285-2895-5
  16. 1 2 Cornwell, Neil and Christian, Nicole. Reference Guide to Russian Literature, Page 514. Taylor & Francis: London, 1998
  17. ↑ Menshutkin 1952, p. 120.
  18. ↑ Shiltsev, Vladimir (March 2014). "The 1761 Discovery of Venus' Atmosphere: Lomonosov and Others". Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage. 17 (1): 85–112. Bibcode:2014JAHH...17...85S.
  19. ↑ A.Koukarine, et al., "Experimental Reconstruction of Lomonosov's Discovery of Venus's Atmosphere with Antique Refractors During the 2012 Transit of Venus" (2012)
  20. ↑ V.Shiltsev, "Lomonosov's Discovery of Venus Atmosphere in 1761: English Translation of Original Publication with Commentaries" (2012)
  21. ↑ V.Shiltsev, I.Nesterenko, and R.Rosenfeld, "Replicating the discovery of Venus's atmosphere", Physics Today, Feb.2013 / Volume 66, Issue 2, p.64 (2013) http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v66/i2/p64_s1
  22. ↑ "On an optic pipe improvement" — Lomonosov M.V. Selected works in two volumes. Volume I: Natural sciences and philosophy. Moscow: Nauka (Science) publishing house, 1986 (in Russian). Name in Russian: «Об усовершенствовании зрительных труб» — М. В. Ломоносов. Избранные произведения. В двух томах. Т. 1. Естественные науки и философия. М.: Наука. 1986
  23. ↑ Lomonosov M. V. On the strata of the Earth: a translation of "O sloiakh zemnykh" / translated by S. M. Rowland, S. Korolev. Boulder: Geological Soc. of America, 2012. 41 p. (Special paper; 485)
  24. ↑ Life and Death of Alfred Wegener by Alexey Fedorchuk (in Russian)
  25. ↑ Eduard Belcher Prediction of Antarctica by Lomonosov (in Russian)
  26. ↑ Elena Lavrenova. "Lomonosov biography". Foxdesign.ru. Retrieved 2 May 2011.
  27. ↑ "М. В. Ломоносов: к 300-летию со дня рождения". narfu.ru. Retrieved 2 May 2011.
  28. ↑ "''М. А. Безбородое'' М.В.Ломоносов. Фабрика В Усть-Рудицах". Grokhovs1.chat.ru. 5 December 2001. Retrieved 2 May 2011.
  29. ↑ hist.msu.ru
  30. ↑ Alex Preminger, Terry V. F. Brogan. The New Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics. MJF Books, 1993. (originally from the Pennsylvania State University), p. 1104
  31. ↑ Sutherland, Christine (1984). The Princess of Siberia: The Story of Maria Volkonsky and the Decembrist Exiles. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-23727-1.
  32. ↑ Hamilton, Simon. "A Rambling Dictionary of Tallinn Street Names".
  33. ↑ Russian floating nuclear power station undergoes mooring tests, NuclearPowerDaily.com, 7 July 2016, accessed 25 July 2016

Sources

English translations

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