Mikhail Lomonosov

Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765) was the great Russian scientist, born in the far north in the family of a fisherman. After having read all the books he could find, his passion for studying drove him from his hometown to Moscow. He was only 19 and the journey took 3 weeks on foot.

Many Lomonosov's ideas were ahead of his time, forming the state of modern geology and mineralogy. Lomonosov’s spheres of interest were also natural science, chemistry, physics, astronomy, history, art, philology, optical devices and quite some others.

He discovered the law of conservation of matter and motion as well as the atmosphere of Venus. In addition, Lomonosov wrote poetry, which had a great influence on the development of the Russian literary language. He wrote the first Russian grammar.

Under Lomonosov’s initiative Russian empress Elizabeth founded Moscow University in 1755, which is currently the largest Russian university with 40,000 students, over 5,000 academic staff as well alma mater of 13 Nobel laureates, 6 Fields Medal winners, and one Turing Award winner.