Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov
2011 is the 300th anniversary of Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov's birth. Mikhail Lomonosov was one of the intellectual titans of the eighteenth century. The great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin described him as a person of formidable willpower and keen scientific mind, whose lifelong passion was learning. Lomonosov's interests ranged from history, rhetoric, art and poetry to mechanics, chemistry and mineralogy.
Lomonosov was born in the village of Denisovka (later renamed Lomonosovo in his honour) in the Arkhangelsk Governorate, in the Far North of Russia. His father, Vasily Dorofeyevich Lomonosov, was a fisherman turned ship owner who amassed a small fortune transporting goods from Arkhangelsk to Pustozyorsk, Solovki, Kola, and Lapland.
When Lomonosov was ten, he began accompanying his father on trading missions. He spent most of the 1720's travelling to ports both close to home on the White Sea and as far away as the northern Arctic Sea. Among other things, Lomonosov learned navigation, maritime meteorology, astronomy, pearl-diving and became familiar both with naval culture and with the cultures of northern peoples such as the Finns, Nenets and Laplanders.
Learning was young Lomonosov's passion. His first teacher was the local deacon Semyon Sabelnikov and for many years the only books he had access to were religious texts. When he was fourteen, Lomonosov was given copies of Meletius Smotrytsky's Modern Church Slavonic (a grammar book) and Leonty Magnitsky's Arithmetic.
Despite his father's objections, Lomonosov left Kholmogory and joined a caravan travelling to Moscow. He arrived in Moscow in early January. Claiming to be the son of a priest, he obtained admission into the Slavic Greek Latin Academy. After three years in Moscow, he was sent to Kiev to study for one year at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy. He quickly became dissatisfied with the education he was receiving in Kiev, and returned to Moscow several months ahead of schedule, resuming his studies there. He completed a twelve-year study course in only five years, graduating at the top of his class. In 1736, with 12 of his classmates, Lomonosov was chosen to continue his education at the Imperial Academy of Science in Saint Petersburg. A year later, he and two other talented students were sent to study chemistry and mining in Marburg, Germany.
The University of Marburg was among Europe's most important universities in the mid-18th century due to the presence of the philosopher Christian Wolff, a prominent figure of the German Enlightenment. Lomonosov became one of Wolff's personal students while at Marburg. Both philosophically and in his work as a science administrator, this
connection would be the most influential of Lomonosov's life. Lomonosov quickly mastered the German language, and in addition to philosophy, devoted himself to the study of chemistry and took an interest in the works of 17th century English theologian and natural philosopher Robert Boyle.
Studying in Germany allowed Lomonosov to broaden his academic curriculum to include Classic and contemporary literature and languages. Here he began writing poetry, mostly odes. In responce to Trediakovsky's tract of 1735, The New and Brief Method for Writing Russian Verse, Lomonosov came up with his own method and wrote A Letter on the Rules of Composing Russian Poetry. Lomonosov developed Trediakovsky's basic idea (that the meter of Russian verse ought to be measured in feet rather than in syllables) into a more flexible system, establishing the syllabatonic mode that remains the most basic element of Russian verse composition.
In 1739 Lomonosov left Marburg for Freiberg in order to study mining with the famous Professor Henckel. He left Freiberg after a year believing that Henckel had already taught him everything he knew.
Lomonosov returned to Russia in 1741. A year later, he was named adjutant to the Russian Academy of Science and immediately submitted the first of three proposals for building Russia's first chemistry laboratory, but the proposal was not accepted until 1746.
From 1742 to 1750 Lomonosov wrote many odes, including Morning Meditation on the Greatness of God and Evening Meditation on the Greatness of God on the occasion of the Northern Lights. In 1742 he also published the first edition of his Short Guide to Rhetoric. The full edition appeared in 1748.
Eager to improve Russia's educational system, in 1755 Lomonosov joined his patron Count Ivan Shuvalov in founding Moscow State University. In 1755, on January 25, which is St. Tatiana's Day according to the Russian Orthodox Church calendar, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna signed the decree that a university should be founded in Moscow. The opening ceremony took place on April 26, the same day that Elizaveta Petrovna's coronation day was celebrated.
According to Lomonosov's plan, there were originally three departments. First, all the students acquired a comprehensive knowledge in the field of science and humanities at the Department of Philosophy; then they could specialize and continue at the Department of Philosophy or join either the Law Department or the Department of Medicine. Lectures were delivered either in Latin, the language of educated people at the time, or in Russian.
In 1757 Lomonosov published his Russian Grammar, where he established the importance of the relationship between spoken Russian and Church Slavonic. He believed that spoken Russian and Church Slavonic could be combined in three styles, according to the loftiness of the writer's goals: the first, "high" style to be used for tragedies, odes and elegies, should include more Slavonicisms; the second, "middle" style, consisting of an equal mix of Russian and Slavonic, should be used for drama, correspondence, and satire; and the third, "low" style included mostly Russian words and existed for comedies, epigrams and everyday speech. This understanding of style proved extremely influential in the development of the poetic tradition and of the modern Russian literary language.
As a physicist, Mikhail Vasilyevich regarded heat as a form of motion, suggested the wave theory of light, contributed to the formulation of the kinetic theory of gases and stated the idea of conservation of matter in the following words: "... if the amount of matter decreases in one place, it increases elsewhere. This universal law of nature embraces laws of motion as well, for an object moving others by its own force in fact imparts to another object the force it loses."
Lomonosov was the first person to hypothesize the existence of an atmosphere on Venus. In a small observatory near his house in Petersburg he observed the orbit of Venus around the Sun and discovered that its atmosphere consists of dense gas.
As a chemist, Lomonosov was the first person to record the freezing of mercury. Believing that nature is subject to regular and continuous evolution, he demonstrated the organic origin of soil, peat, coal, petroleum and amber.
In 1760, he explained the formation of icebergs. His observation of iceberg formation led to his pioneering work in geography. Lomonosov got close to the theory of continental drift and theoretically predicted the existence of Antarctica (he argued that icebergs of the South Ocean could only be formed on a dry land covered with ice). In 1764, he organized an expedition (led by Admiral Vasili Chichagov) to find the Northeast Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by sailing along the northern coast of Siberia.
4 April, 1765 Lomonosov died at home and was buried four days later in the Lazarev cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky monastery in Petersburg. Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lomonosov
http://www.nndb.com
mikhail-lomonosov.com
http://www.msu.ru/en/info/history.html
D.A. Popova
Сведения об авторе: Попова Диана Андреевна, редактор журнала «Иностранные языки в школе», Москва. E-mail: editor@flsmozaika.ru. Ключевые слова: scientist, poet, philologist.
Michail Wassiljewitsch Lomonossow
2011 wird der 300. Geburtstag von Michail Wassiljewitsch Lomonossow gefeiert. Michail Lomonossow war ein großer russischer Gelehrter, Aufklärer, Naturwissenschaftler und Reformer der russischen Sprache. Er gilt als Universalgelehrter. Er hat einen riesigen Beitrag zur Weltwissenschaft geleistet.
Michail Wassiljewitsch Lomonossow wurde am 8/19. November 1711 im Dorf Mischaninskaja (nach anderen Quellen - Denisowka) geboren. Dieses Dorf befand sich auf einer der Inseln im Delta der Nördlichen Dwina, nicht weit von dem heutigen Archangelsk. Der Vater des künftigen Gelehrten beschäftigte sich mit der Seetierjagd. Die Mutter von Michail Wassiljewitsch war die Tochter eines Diakons. Sie starb, als Michail neun Jahr alt war. Die zweite Frau des Vaters liebte ihren Stiefsohn nicht. Besonders missfiel ihr Michails Leidenschaft für das Lesen.
Den Weg in die Wissenschaft begann Lomonossow mit dem Erlernen von Lesen und Schreiben. Sein Forschergeist und ausgezeichnetes Gedächtnis ermöglichten es ihm, diese damals nicht leichte Kunst rasch zu beherrschen. Anfangs las der Junge die kirchlichen Bücher, die im Vaterhaus waren. Bald lernte er zum ersten Mal die weltliche Literatur kennen. Besonders interessant waren für Michail Lomonossow Bücher wie „Grammatik" von Melentij Smotritskij, „Arithmetik" von Leontij Magnitskij und „Psalter" von Simeon Polotskij. Diese Lehrbücher lernte er auswendig.
Michail war der einzige Sohn in der Familie, und der Vater wollte seine ganze Wirtschaft dem Sohn übergeben. Aber der junge Mann wählte für sich einen anderen Weg, den Weg
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