|
Arabic
Bengali
Chinese
English
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Malay
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese|
BIOGRAPHIES OF GREAT SCIENTISTS
Lomonosov Mikhail Vasilievich Biography of a scientist
Directory / Biographies of great scientists
Pushkin said wonderfully about him, more precisely than anyone else: "Lomonosov was a great man. Between Peter I and Catherine II, he alone is an original associate of education. He created the first university. It is better to say, he himself was our first university." Mikhail Lomonosov was born on November 19, 1711 in the village of Denisovka near Kholmogor, in the Arkhangelsk province. In the view of many people, Lomonosov, the son of a Pomeranian fisherman from a poor village lost in the snow, driven by a thirst for knowledge, abandons everything and goes to Moscow to study. In fact, this is more of a legend than a true story. His father Vasily Dorofeevich was a well-known person in Pomorie, the owner of a fish artel of several ships and a successful merchant. He was one of the most educated people of those places, since he had once studied in Moscow as a priest. It is known that he had a large library. Mikhail's mother, Elena Ivanovna, was the daughter of a deacon. It was the mother, who, unfortunately, died early, taught her son to read at a young age and instilled love in the book. The young man especially fell in love with the grammar of Melenty Smotrytsky, the Psalter in syllabic verses of Simeon Polotsky and the arithmetic of Magnitsky. So, going to Moscow in 1730, Lomonosov was not at all an ignoramus. He already had the highest possible education in those places, which allowed him to enter the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy - the first higher educational institution in Moscow. Here Michael studied Latin, politics, rhetoric and, in part, philosophy. Lomonosov wrote to I. I. Shuvalov about his life in this first school period in 1753: “Having one altyn per day of pay, it was impossible to have more food per day than bread and kvass for money, other things for paper, for shoes and other needs. Thus I lived for five years (1731-1736), but did not leave the sciences. A happy accident - a call in 1735 from the Moscow Academy to the Academy of Sciences of 12 capable students - decided the fate of Lomonosov. Three of these students, including Mikhail, were sent in September 1736 to Germany, to the University of Marburg, to the "glorious" at that time Professor Wolf, a well-known German philosopher. Lomonosov studied mathematics, physics and philosophy under the guidance of Wolf. Then he studied in Freiberg, with Professor Henkel, chemistry and metallurgy. Along with praiseworthy reviews of Mikhail's studies abroad, his leaders wrote more than once about the disorderly life that ended for Lomonosov in 1740 after his marriage in Marburg to Elizaveta-Christina Zilch, the daughter of a deceased member of the city duma. Disorderly life, revelry, debts, moving from city to city were not only the result of Lomonosov's addictive nature, but also corresponded to the general character of student life at that time. In German students, he also found that passion for poetry, which was expressed in two odes sent to them from abroad to the Academy of Sciences in 1738 - "Ode of Fenelon" and in 1739 - "Ode on the Capture of Khotyn". To the latter, he attached a "Letter on the rules of Russian poetry." These two odes, despite their enormous importance in the history of Russian poetry, were not published at the time and served only for the Academy of Sciences as proof of Lomonosov's literary abilities. Meanwhile, the history of our new poetry begins with "Ode on the Capture of Khotin" and "Letter on the Rules of Russian Poetry". In general, Lomonosov's work in the field of Russian literature is very significant. He reformed the system of Russian verse, laying the foundations for the development of modern versification. His observations in the field of language served as the beginning of the formation of the Russian literary language of a secular nature. In order to bring order to the literary language, Lomonosov distributed its entire vocabulary into three groups - calms, associating certain literary genres with each of them. From this comes the definition of comedy as a low genre, and tragedy, as a high one, adopted in Russian literary criticism. In 1741 Lomonosov returned to his homeland. Despite the odes, translations of works by foreign academicians, the student Lomonosov did not receive either a place or a salary. Only with the accession to the throne of Elizabeth Petrovna, in January 1742, Lomonosov was assigned to the Academy as an adjunct in physics. In 1743, a historical department and a historical assembly arose at the academy, in the meetings of which Lomonosov led the fight against Miller, accusing him of deliberately vilifying the Slavs. And soon Lomonosov, due to "impudence", disobedience to the conference of the academy and frequent quarrels with the Germans in a drunken state, was "kept under guard" for more than seven months. He remained without pay for a whole year; in response to requests for remuneration for food and medicine, he received only permission to take academic publications worth 80 rubles. In 1745, Lomonosov filed a petition to appoint him a professor of chemistry. Appointment to the academy - as a professor of chemistry - coincided with the arrival of his wife from abroad. Four years later, their daughter Elena was born. From that time on, Lomonosov's rather prosperous and calm life began. His scientific activity flourishes. Like many scientists of that time, Lomonosov "experienced everything and penetrated everything," in the words of Pushkin. But his main discoveries concern chemistry, physics and astronomy. They were decades ahead of the work of Western European scientists, but often went unnoticed by European science, which did not attach much importance to the development of accurate knowledge in the barbaric country, which they considered Russia. Leonhard Euler was perhaps the only one of his contemporaries who understood the scale of his mind and appreciated the depth of his generalizations. Paying tribute to the merits of Lomonosov, Euler noted his "happy ability to expand the limits of true knowledge of nature ..." Thanks to Euler's attention, at the beginning of 1748, Lomonosov achieved the construction and equipment according to his drawings of a chemical laboratory at the Academy of Sciences, where, in particular, he began to analyze samples of various ores and minerals. He received these samples from mining plants and from miners from all over Russia. The physical and chemical experiments that Lomonosov conducted in his laboratory were highly accurate. Once he made the following experiment: he weighed a sealed glass vessel with lead plates, ignited it, and then weighed it again. The plates were covered with oxide, but the total weight of the vessel did not change. So the law of conservation of matter was discovered - one of the basic laws of nature. The printed publication of the law followed 12 years later, in 1760 in the dissertation "Discourse on the hardness and liquid of bodies." In the history of the law of conservation of energy and mass, Lomonosov rightfully holds the first place. Lomonosov was the first to formulate the main provisions of the kinetic theory of gases, the discovery of which is usually associated with the name of D. Bernoulli. Lomonosov believed that all bodies consist of the smallest moving particles - molecules and atoms, which move faster when the body is heated, and slower when cooled. He made a correct guess about the vertical currents in the atmosphere, correctly pointed out the electrical nature of the northern lights and estimated their height. He tried to develop an ethereal theory of electrical phenomena and thought about the connection between electricity and light, which he wanted to discover experimentally. In the era of dominance of the corpuscular theory of light, he openly supported the wave theory of "Hugenius" (Huygens) and developed an original theory of colors. Together with him, his friend, the German scientist Georg Richmann, was engaged in the study of electricity. These studies ended sadly - while conducting an experiment with lightning during a thunderstorm, Richmann died in 1753. Lomonosov's scientific interests touched the most unexpected areas and led him even to the field of fine arts. In the early fifties, Lomonosov showed particular interest in mosaics, glass and bead factories. It is to Lomonosov that we owe the birth of Russian mosaics and a true masterpiece - the famous panel made at the Lomonosov factory and dedicated to the battle of Poltava. In 1753, Lomonosov received a privilege to establish a mosaic and beads factory and 211 souls with land in the Koporsky district. The scientist had many enemies and envious people, headed by the all-powerful Schumacher. Fortunately, he found a patron - Count Shuvalov. Through Shuvalov, Lomonosov was able to put into practice important plans, for example, the founding of Moscow University in 1755, for which Lomonosov wrote the initial project, based on "legalized institutions, rites and customs of foreign universities." In 1757, he became chancellor, that is, in modern terms, vice-president of the Academy of Sciences. In the same year, he moved from a state academic apartment to his own house, which was preserved on the Moika until 1830. In 1759, Lomonosov was engaged in organizing a gymnasium and drawing up a charter for it and a university at the academy, and with all his might defended the rights of the lower classes to education and objected to voices heard: "Where are the learned people?" Scientists, according to Lomonosov, are needed "for Siberia, mining, factories, the preservation of the people, architecture, justice, the correction of morals, merchants, the unity of pure faith, agriculture and foretelling the weather, military affairs, going north and communicating with an orient." According to the geographical department, Lomonosov was engaged in collecting information about Russia. In 1761, Lomonosov followed the passage of Venus between the Earth and the Sun. This very rare phenomenon was observed by scientists from many countries who specially organized distant expeditions for this purpose. Such observations of Venus made it possible to refine the distance from the Earth to the Sun. But only Lomonosov, at his home in St. Petersburg, observing through a small tube, made the great discovery that there is an atmosphere on Venus, apparently denser than that of the Earth. This discovery alone would be enough for the name of Lomonosov to be preserved for centuries. In an effort to equip astronomers with the best tool for penetrating deep into the Universe, Lomonosov created a new type of reflective reflecting telescope. The Lomonosov telescope had only one tilted mirror - it gave a brighter image of the object, because the light was not lost, as when reflected from the second mirror. Far ahead of contemporary science, Lomonosov was the first scientist to figure out that the surface of the Sun is a raging ocean of fire, in which even "stones boil like water." The nature of comets was also a mystery in Lomonosov's time. Lomonosov expressed the bold idea that the tails of comets are formed under the action of electrical forces emanating from the Sun. Later, it was found that the formation of comet tails really involved the sun's rays. After the accession to the throne of Catherine II, in 1762, Lomonosov wrote "Ode", in which he compared the new empress with Elizabeth and expected that Catherine II "would restore the golden age of science and save the beloved Russian family from contempt." His hopes were justified. In 1764, an expedition to Siberia was equipped, under the influence of Lomonosov's work: "On the Northern Passage to the East Indies by the Siberian Ocean." Back in 1742, when Lomonosov was enrolled in the Academy of Sciences, he began to write a large work on mining, but numerous other academic obligations delayed the completion of this work. He published "The First Foundations of Metallurgy or Mining" only in 1764. In his book, Lomonosov gave a description of ores and minerals according to their external features, spoke about the occurrence of ores, indicated how pieces of ore found in a stream or river can be used to get to the vein. He drew the attention of miners to the importance of the color of rocks. Mikhail Vasilyevich correctly explained that minerals are colored by the presence of oxides of iron, copper, lead and other metals. The scientist's indication of the "satellites" of the ores was very valuable. For example, he reported that sulfuric and arsenic pyrites accompany gold, bismuth occurs together with tin, etc. Lomonosov's book was the first practical guide to ore prospecting based on rigorous scientific observations. It was sent to the mines and was of great help to Russian mining foremen, who discovered many new deposits in the Urals, Altai and in the Nerchinsk Territory. However, Lomonosov did not limit himself to practical information only. He believed that in order to be successful in his work, a prospector needs to know how and under what conditions the minerals he was looking for were formed. Therefore, Lomonosov's remarkable work "On the Layers of the Earth" was attached to the book, which laid the foundation for geological science in our country. The scientist outlined in it his views on the structure of the earth's crust, the origin of rocks and the fossils and minerals found in them, the formation of mountains, the reasons for the movement of land and sea, etc. Lomonosov's views were far ahead of his time. So, Mikhail Vasilievich was one of the first to understand the importance of internal forces in the formation of the Earth's relief. At the time of Lomonosov, many scientists did not yet understand the significance of fossils found in the earth - the remains of animal and plant organisms. Some scholars considered them "the play of nature" or believed that the fossilized shells of animals were brought to land during the "global flood" that the Bible tells about. Mikhail Vasilyevich claimed that the remains of extinct animals are found where these animals lived. If fossilized sea shells are found on land, then this land was once the bottom of the sea. Lomonosov was the first to understand that animals and plants of distant geological epochs were not only preserved in the form of separate fossilized remains, but also participated in the formation of certain layers of the earth, for example, layers of coal. He correctly explained the formation of chernozem, linking it with the accumulation of humus in the soil - the remains of dead, decaying plant and animal organisms. This idea of Lomonosov in the XNUMXth century was developed and confirmed in the studies of chernozem by V. V. Dokuchaev, who founded a new science - soil science. At that time, scientists considered coal to be a rock soaked in some kind of "coal juice". This opinion was held by some geologists even at the beginning of the XNUMXth century. Meanwhile, back in the XNUMXth century, Lomonosov argued that fossil coal, like peat, was formed from plant remains, subsequently covered with rock layers. It should be noted that Lomonosov was the first to point out the formation of oil from the remains of organisms. This idea was confirmed and recognized only in the XNUMXth century. Through the office of the Academy of Sciences, Lomonosov also appealed to the mining industry with a request to send him samples of ores. Some of the miners immediately began to collect collections of minerals and ores on their plots and send them to St. Petersburg. Premature death prevented Lomonosov from completing the enormous work of collecting and processing minerals from our country. The idea of Lomonosov was carried out later by the followers of the great scientist - academicians V. M. Severgin and N. I. Koksharov. In June 1764, Catherine II visited Lomonosov's house and for two hours watched "works of mosaic art, physical instruments newly invented by Lomonosov, and some physical and chemical experiments." When the Empress left, Lomonosov gave her poetry. All his life the scientist worked at the limit, studied, sat behind books not for hours - for days. His niece Matrena Evseevna told about the last years of his life: “It used to be, my heart, that it would be read and written down that for a whole week he didn’t drink, didn’t eat anything except March [beer] with a piece of bread and butter.” Reflections and ardor of imagination made Lomonosov extremely absent-minded in his old age. During dinner, instead of a pen, which, according to school habit, he liked to put behind his ear, he often put a spoon with which he slurped hot, or wiped himself with his wig, which he took off when he started eating cabbage soup. "Rarely, it happened, he wrote paper, so as not to fill it with ink instead of sand." But still he was not an absent-minded armchair eccentric. Large, later full, and at the same time fast, strong, although he had a kind, cheerful, but cool, quick-tempered to rage. Once he was conceived to rob three sailors on Vasilevsky Island, he became so indignant that he laid one without feeling, put another to flight with a broken face, and decided to rob the third himself, took off his jacket, camisole, pants, tied him in a knot and brought him " prey" home. At the end of his life, Lomonosov was elected an honorary member of the Stockholm and Bologna academies. Having already become recognized, surrounded by honor, Lomonosov did not change his habits. Casual in clothes, in a white blouse with an unbuttoned collar, in a Chinese dressing gown, he could receive an important dignitary, and sit up with an Arkhangelsk fellow countryman over a mug of cold beer, because "this drink complained directly from the ice." Until the end of his life, Lomonosov did not stop helping his relatives, called them to St. Petersburg and corresponded with them. A letter from Lomonosov to his sister has been preserved, written a month before his death, which followed on April 15, 1765. He died by accident, from a trifling spring cold. The funeral of the scientist in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra was distinguished by splendor and crowds. Author: Samin D.K.
▪ Heisenberg Werner. Biography
Machine for thinning flowers in gardens
02.05.2024 Advanced Infrared Microscope
02.05.2024 Air trap for insects
01.05.2024
▪ Step-down voltage regulator LM26001 ▪ Mobile phone with FM receiver ▪ Viruses are more dangerous for men than for women
▪ site section Tone and volume controls. Article selection ▪ article Video editing for beginners. video art ▪ article Who are the Vikings? Detailed answer ▪ Article Gastroenterologist. Job description ▪ The thread's article remains intact. Focus Secret
Home page | Library | Articles | Website map | Site Reviews
www.diagram.com.ua |
We recommend interesting articles Section 
See other articles Section 
Latest news of science and technology, new electronics:
All languages of this page