(Lomonosov) by Vladimir VASILYEV, RAS Corresponding Member, Chairman of the Research Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the integrated program "History of the Russian Academy of Sciences" The activity of Mikhail Lomonosov, an outstanding Russian scientist, a person of truly encyclopedic knowledge, enlightener and genuine patriot of Russia was manifold. When remembering our great compatriot, we shall repeat not once the words "the first", "for the first time" and "stands first". It is quite unthinkable, but this is the case: the first Russian scientist and "the founder of the Russian science"; one of the first two Russian academicians; the first professor of chemistry; "the creator of the first university" (according to the Russian poet Pushkin he was also "himself our first university"); he was the first to advocate reorganization of bookselling in the capitalist way; publication of multivolume editions by subscription started in Russia for the first time on his initiative; he stood first to deliver lectures in Russian for a large attendance and at academic meetings and to head the struggle for revision of the Academy Regulations of 1747, which gave preference to foreigners and held out no hope even of a smallest autonomy for the Academy, and many other things. "The greatest genius of the new time" was Pushkin's assessment of Lomonosov. Academician Vavilov called Lomonosov a genius of the great Russian people and a banner of our culture. It was stressed at the grand meeting in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses (today the State Concert Hall) devoted to the 250th anniversary of the USSR Academy of Sciences that "the titanic lifework of Lomonosov, a scientist and encyclopedist of genius raised to a new level the whole activity of the Academy already in the 18th century". As Academician Kursanov noted in his report "Lomonosov and the Academy of Sciences" at the grand meeting devoted to the 250th anniversary of the Academy of Scien ... Читать далее