M.V. Lomonosov, a great son of Russia

This man is known to every student. His interests were strikingly manysided.
Among his papers there are works on physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, geography, astronomy and history. He was an outstanding poet, artist, enlightener and social active worker. And in all these fields he left a remarkable trace. However he didn’t care about the distribution of his works abroad. Therefore his wonderful activity became unnoticed by European scientific society and is more of national importance.

And his contemporaries valued M.V. Lomonosov mostly as a poet. His heritage of physics and chemistry was buried in unread books and in unpublished manuscripts. His numerous witty apparatuses were not preserved.

However many of his opinions were surprisingly deep and promising. For example earlier than Lavuasew Michkail Vasilevich formulated the law of preserving the matter in chemical conversions. In his work “Thoughts about the cause of heat and cold” Lomonosov connected directly heat of a substance with internal movement of its particles. As to Newton, he differentiated the matter and its movement. That is why, a well known physicist couldn’t come to a correct conclusion, which in future became one of the most fundamental ideas of science.

In addition Lomonosov predicted many states of kinetical gases theory.
He created the profound theory of atmospheric electricity, moved out an idea about slow oscillations of earth crust 60 years before Young. In mineralogy and geology he did the fruitful observation of combined disposition of different minerals in the earth crust long before Verner. In 1754 Lomonosov stated his opinion of the crystal formation and recommended to study the structure of crystals.

Rome de Lile, who is considered the founder of the crystallography, suggested the same idea only in 1783.
Unfortunately all these opinions did not play the main role in scientific history, although they are worthy of the respect. In spite of this fact, the influence of Lomonosov as a person for the Russian culture is great.

Together with the science and poetry the mosaic art was a remarkable hobby of Lomonosov. In this field chemistry was combined with art, optics and technique. At that time the Italians were the best masters of mosaic, who have kept the method of colour glass preparation in secret. Lomonosov decided to open this secret and he succeeded in doing it. Thus he had to become an artist because of the absence of mosaic masters in Russia.

And M. V. Lomonosov did a great work in the field of education, trying to develop the Russian science.
My research is in a narrow speciality but it is undoubtedly based on the fundamental chemical laws, which were developed by the outstanding scientists, and Lomonosov is surely among them.

Taraimovich E.S.