On 7 December 1730, a tall, physically fit 19-year-old, the son of a peasant-turned-fisherman, ran away from his hometown
Kalmakari, a village near the northern Russian city of Archangel. His departure had been quietly arranged. He had borrowed three rubles and a warm jacket from a neighbor, and he carried with him his two most treasured books, Grammatica and Arithmetica. He persuaded the captain of a sleigh convoy carrying frozen fish to let him ride along to Moscow, where he was to fulfill his dream of studying “sciences.” He left behind a kind but illiterate father, a wicked and jealous stepmother, prospects of an arranged marriage into a family of means, and his would-be inheritance—a two-mast sailboat named Seagull. The young man’s name was Mikhail Vasilevich Lomonosov.
He thought that ahead of him lay a month-long trek along a snowy, 800-mile route. In fact, it was the beginning of a much longer journey that would usher in the modern era of Russian science. Young Lomonosov couldn’t have known that after years of hardship and a decade of scientific training, he would become the first Russian-born member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, a nobleman, and Russia’s most accomplished polymath. And although his name was forgotten in scientific circles for nearly 50 years, he has reemerged during the past two centuries as a cult figure in Russian science.
As a scientist, Lomonosov was equal parts thinker and experimenter. He tested his theories and hypotheses with experiments that he planned and carried out himself. Although proficient in math, he never used differential calculus. He would work on research topics for years, even decades at a time, always with an eye toward turning discoveries into new practices or inventions.
Lomonosov believed physical and chemical phenomena were best explained in terms of the mechanical interactions of corpuscles—“minute, insensible particles” analogous to what we now know as molecules. 1 Giving name to the philosophy, he coined the term “physical chemistry” in 1752.
He is perhaps best known for being the first person to experimentally confirm the law of conservation of matter. That metals gain weight when heated—now a well-known consequence of oxidation—confounded British chemist Robert Boyle, who had famously observed the effect in 1673. The result seemed to implicate that heat itself was a kind of matter. In 1756 Lomonosov disproved that notion by demonstrating that when lead plates are heated inside an airtight vessel, the collective weight of the vessel and its contents stays constant.
At more than six feet four inches tall and physically strong, Lomonosov reminded many of his idol, Peter the Great. Anecdotes of the scientist’s exploits depict a daring existence. He and two other Russian interns are said to have so out-reveled German students in Marburg that the city sighed with relief when the trio left for Freiberg. German hussars once got him drunk and enlisted in the Prussian army, which he later escaped. And as a 50-year-old academician, he once fought off three unlucky sailors attempting to rob him; he beat the men and stripped them of their clothes.
Lomonosov was also known to argue fiercely with inept colleagues at the academy. For one quarrel that ended in physical violence, he paid dearly. Then just an adjunct, his salary was halved, he was placed under house arrest for eight months—one of the most scientifically productive periods of his life, he later noted—and he was freed only after a public apology. Lomonosov’s hot temper and rebellious character were integral to his rise as a legendary figure, as were his immense self-esteem and dignity, rare traits in imperial Russia.
He once admonished his patron, Count Ivan Shuvalov, saying, “Not only do I not wish to be a court fool at the table of lords and such earthy rulers, but even of the Lord God himself, who gave me my wit until he sees fit to take it away.” Had it been said to a less-enlightened count, such a statement might have been met with severe repercussions. Shuvalov, however, remained a lifelong friend. It was he who embraced Lomonosov’s charter of the first Russian university and who convinced Empress Elizabeth to sign a decree establishing Moscow University on 25 January 1755, a day still celebrated annually in Russia as Students’ Day. The university offered education to a wide stratum of Russian society and was key to the country’s intellectual progress. In 1940 it was named after Lomonosov.
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip...1063/PT.3.1438
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