Lomonosov

Lomonosov is a unique figure in Russian history. Not only because he was a scholar of world level, not only due to the variety of his knowledge and interests, but also because his fate was exceptional. Son of a black-peasant, he rose to the very top. He became an honorary member of several famous academies. The highest nobles of the Russian court considered it an honor to be his friends. Two empresses gladly held conversations with him.

Between school teachers, there are sometimes arguments about which classroom should hang the portrait of Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov—after all, he was a physicist and a chemist, a mathematician and a mineralogist, a maker of instruments and a historian, a writer and a man of letters… Even in an art class, his portrait would be appropriate, because Lomonosov created a significant number of magnificent mosaics.

There’s room in the biography of the great Russian scientist for odd, imaginative hypotheses too. Could Lomonosov have been the son of Peter the Great? Is it true that Catherine II was involved in his death?

Read about this in the new book in the series “The Most Complete Biography.”