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Fueling Peter’s Mill: Mikhail Lomonosov’s Educational Training in Russia and Germany, 1731–1741

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Abstract

This article, the second in a series about the Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765), traces his education from his arrival in Moscow in 1731 to study at the Slavic-Greco-Latin Academy, through his admission to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1736, to his trip abroad to complete his educational studies from 1736 to 1741. Lomonosov’s story during this time opens a vista on the introduction of modern physics and modern science into Russia. Michael D. Gordin has argued that Peter the Great’s plans to Westernize Russia were more broadly conceived than he is usually credited, with ambitions that exceeded mere utilitarian and pragmatic goals. Lomonosov’s career trajectory is a good example, illustrating how different aspects of the Petrine vision intersected with and reinforced each other. The article ends with Lomonosov’s return to Russia from Germany in 1741, an important landmark in the growth of the Academy and of Russian science.

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References

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  2. Michael D. Gordin, “The Importation of Being Earnest: The Early St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences,” Isis 91, no. 1 (2000), 1–31.

  3. For more on Lomonosov, see Boris N. Menshutkin, Russia’s Lomonosov (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952); Peter Hoffman, “Michail Vasil’evič Lomonosov (1711–1765),” in Ein Enzyklopädist im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Essen: Peter Lang, 2011).

  4. The principal source on Lomonosov’s life is Valentin L. Chenakal, ed., Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva M. V. Lomonosova [Chronicles of the Life and Works of M. V. Lomonosov] (Moscow: Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1961).

  5. Robert P. Crease and Vladimir Shiltsev, “Pomor Polymath: The Upbringing of Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, 1711–1730,” Physics in Perspective 15 no. 4 (2013): 391–414.

  6. Chenakal, ed., Chronicles (ref. 4), 22.

  7. The Academy’s university ceased in 1766, a year after Lomonosov’s death, though it was resurrected in 1819 as the St. Petersburg Imperial University, which still exists. The Academy gymnasium was housed from 1726 until 1764 in the building next to the Kunstkamer; in 1764 it moved to a separate building. The gymnasium closed in 1805, with its students moving to the new St. Petersburg gubernia gymnasium.

  8. Henckel had an international reputation at the time, as the author of Pyritologia oder Kies-Historie (1725) and as a member of the Berlin Academy and the Leopoldina Academy.

  9. Johann Friedrich Henckel, letter to Johann Albrecht Korf, January 21, 1736, in A. Kunik, ed., Sbornik Materialov po Istorii Akademii Nauk [Materials on the History of the Academy of Sciences] (St. Petersburg, 1865), 225–26.

  10. J. Staehlin, Podlinnie Anekdoti o Petre Velikom, Sobrannie Yakovom Shtelinim (Genuine Anecdotes from the Life of Peter the Great) (Moscow: Reshetnikov Print House, 1830), 166–67.

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  15. Tore Frängsmyr, “Christian Wolff’s Mathematical Method and its Impact on the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas 36, no. 4 (1975), 653–68.

  16. Friedrich Engels once skewered Wolff as the proponent of a “shallow theology” in which whatever exists does so for man’s good, which justified the appropriateness of natural arrangements in such a way that “cats were created to eat mice, mice to be eaten by cats and nature as a whole to testify to the wisdom of the Creator.” Friedrich Engels, “Dialectic of Nature,” in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, On Religion, 152–93 (Mineola: Dover, 2008), 158.

  17. Frängsmyr, “Christian Wolff’s Mathematical Method” (ref. 15).

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  22. Johann Pütter, Selbstbiographie: zur dankbaren Jubelfeier, vol. 1 (Göttingen 1792), 27.

  23. Wolff’s own letters are collected in Briefe von Christian Wolff aus den Jahren 1719–1753 (St. Petersburg: Eggers, 1860); letters from Wolff and the others are collected in Kunik, Materials on the History (ref. 9). Other important sources are Wilhelm A. Eckhardt “Lomonosow in Marburg,” in Miszellen und Vorträge, Beiträge zur hessischen Geschichte 10 (Marburg: Trautvetter und Fischer Nachf, 1995); Hoffmann, “Lomonosov” (ref. 3), 298.

  24. Alexander Lipski, “The Foundation of the Russian Academy of Sciences,” Isis 44, no. 4 (1953) 349–54, on 349.

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  28. Valentin Boss, Newton and Russia: The Early Influence, 1698–1796 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 164.

  29. On Lomonosov’s books see I. M. Belyaeva, ed., Biblioteka M. V. Lomonosova. Nauchnoe Opisanie Rukopisei I Pechatnih Knig [Library of M. V. Lomonosov. Scientific Review of Manuscripts and Printed Books] (Moscow: Lomonosov Publisher, 2010).

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  31. Morozov, Lomonosov (ref. 18), 157.

  32. Andreev, Russian Students (ref. 12).

  33. Kunik, Materials on the History (ref. 9), 244.

  34. Christian Wolff, letter to Johann Daniel Schumacher, March 30, 1738, in Wolff, Briefe, (ref. 23), 107.

  35. Kunik, Materials on the History (ref. 9), 270–71.

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  39. Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences, f. 1, op. 3, No. 23, l. 226; also in Kunik, Sbornik Materialov (ref. 9), 281.

  40. Kunik, Materials on the History (ref. 9), 287.

  41. Lomonosov, Complete Works (ref. 38), 1:23–63.

  42. Christian Wolff, letter to Johann Albrecht Korf, August 1, 1739, in Kunik, Materials on the History (ref. 9), 305.

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  45. Vissarion G. Belinskiy, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii [Complete Works] (Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1953), 1:65.

  46. Mikhail V. Lomonosov, letter to Johann Daniel Schumacher (from Marburg), November 16, 1740, in Kunik, Materials on the History (ref. 9), 335.

  47. Mikhail V. Lomonosov, letter to Johann Daniel Schumacher (from Marburg), November 16, 1740, in Kunik, Materials on the History (ref. 9), 334–38.

  48. Instruction of Academic Chancellery to Freiberg students, March 14, 1740, in Kunik, Materials on the History (ref. 9), 319–21.

  49. Mikhail V. Lomonosov, letter to Johann Daniel Schumacher (from Marburg), November 16, 1740, in Kunik, Materials on the History (ref. 9), 336; also in Lomonosov, Complete Works (ref. 38), 10:424, 429.

  50. Johann Friedrich Henckel, letter to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, September 23, 1740, in Kunik, Materials on the History (ref. 9), 330–31.

  51. Jacob von Staehlin, Cherty i Anekdoty dlya Biografii Lomonosova, Vzyatie s Ego Sobstevennih Slov Shtelinim. 1783 [Features and Anecdotes for the Biography of Lomonosov, Taken from His Own Words by Shtelin, 1783]; Publication and commentary in G. E. Pavlova, M. V. Lomonosov v Vospominaniyah i Harakteristikah Sovremennikov [M. V. Lomonosov in Memoirs and Characteristics by Contemporaries] (Moscow-Leningrad: Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1962), 51–60.

  52. Robert Wuthnow, “The Institutionalization of Science,” in Meaning and Moral Order, 263–98 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

  53. Lipski, “Foundation of the Russian Academy” (ref. 24), 10–11.

  54. Gordin, “Importation of Being Earnest” (ref. 2).

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Acknowledgements

Many people were consulted on the Lomonosov’s years in Moscow and Germany. We were extraordinarily fortunate to have Michael D. Gordin give us not only help with many details but also substantive suggestions regarding our overall approach. We also greatly appreciate help and advices by Dr. Peter Hoffmann and Dr. Norbert Nail—Lomonosov scholars in Germany and experts on his connections with Wolff—as well as detail explanations given Prof. Dr. Ulrike Wagner-Rau and Dr. Tobias Braune-Krickau of the Marburh University Church on the nature and tradition of interfaith marriages in the mid-eighteenth century Marburg. One of us (VS) had a memorable visit to Freiberg in summer 2017 and wishes to express sincere gratitude to the people whom he met there—Prof. Dr. Friedrich Naumann, Mr. Evgenii Kaschenko, Mrs. Tatziana Piliptsevich and Dr. Dmitry Parkhomchuk—who carefully maintain Lomonosov’s legacy in Saxony and helped to make the trip so successful and very useful for this publication. Staff of the Library of Moskovskoe Obschestvo Ispitatelei Prirodi (Moscow Society of Nature Philosophers) Irina Prokhorova (Director) and Irina Zakharova were extremely cooperative in helping us to find the 1741 hand-written notebooks of Dmitry Vinogradov taken while in Henckel’s lab in Freiberg. Finally, we also appreciate the care and patience with which Joseph D. Martin shepherded the manuscript through the editorial process.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794, USA

    Robert P. Crease

  2. Accelerator Physics Center, Fermilab, PO Box 500, Batavia, IL, 60510, USA

    Vladimir Shiltsev

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  1. Robert P. Crease
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Correspondence to Robert P. Crease.

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Robert P. Crease (corresponding author) is Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University. Vladimir Shiltsev is Director of the Accelerator Physics Center at Fermilab.

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Crease, R.P., Shiltsev, V. Fueling Peter’s Mill: Mikhail Lomonosov’s Educational Training in Russia and Germany, 1731–1741. Phys. Perspect. 20, 272–304 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-018-0227-x

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