Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711–1765) was one of the most far-sighted, polymathic and colourful scientists who ever lived. Far-sighted, because he pioneered the use of quantitative research methods. Polymathic, because though he died at just 53 he contributed to physics, chemistry, astronomy, metallurgy, mining, poetry, literature, mosaics, glassblowing, meteorology, electricity, grammar and history – and built a chemical laboratory, glass factory and flying machine. Colourful, because of irreverent antics and a hot temper. So why is this Russian genius barely known in the West?

Pioneering polymath

Lomonosov was the son of a peasant-turned-fisherman from the Archangel province of north-west Russia. His insatiable love of knowledge, and family conflicts, led him in 1730 to borrow a few rubles and depart for Moscow on foot. It was a time when Peter the Great’s reforms were still being bitterly resisted by entrenched clergy and nobility. Indeed, to enter the Slavic Greek Latin Academy he had to pretend to be a son of nobility. When this deception was exposed in 1734, he was nearly expelled.

In 1736 Lomonosov began four years of study in Germany, where he learned the corpuscular theory of light and the need to treat it within a mathematical framework. He began writing poetry, but his revelry and carousing often landed him in trouble. On one trip a recruiter for the Prussian hussars befriended him, got him drunk and convinced him to enlist. The next morning, Lomonosov awoke in uniform in a heavily guarded fortress. It took him days to devise an escape, by climbing two palisades, swimming two moats and eluding cavalry in hot pursuit.

Lomonosov returned to Russia in 1741, joining the Russian Academy of Sciences. Its founding, by Peter the Great in 1724, essentially marked the start of science in Russia – but it was still staffed by often incompetent foreigners (Bernoulli and Euler had left). Rude and mocking to inept colleagues, Lomonosov landed himself under house arrest following one violent episode. He was released after delivering odes to the Empress and a public apology, and became the Academy’s first Russian academician in 1745.

At the Academy, Lomonosov undertook a breathtaking range of experiments. He transformed Russian chemistry from art into science, introducing quantitative methods and laboratory instruction. He built Russia’s first chemical laboratory, where he conducted about 4000 tests and experiments. He used corpuscular theory to explain the elasticity of air, considered heat a form of rotational motion, introduced the idea of absolute zero and a version of conservation of matter and energy. He developed self-recording thermometers and designed a model helicopter to take them to the upper atmosphere. (A full-scale version was never built.) He designed and built a glass factory, and created a huge (6.4 × 4.8 m) mosaic, The Battle of Poltava. He also founded Moscow State University, although Pushkin called Lomonosov himself “our first university”.

But Lomonosov could not escape embroiling himself in fierce attacks and counterattacks with opponents. These fights reflected in academic circles the ongoing conflict that Peter the Great had set in motion between religion and science.

Many episodes in his life were dramatic. He and co-worker Georg Richmann each built “thunder machines” to measure electricity during thunderstorms. During one storm on 26 July 1752, Lomonosov’s frightened family begged him to leave the lab. He brushed them off, but was interrupted by Richmann’s servant, asking him to come quickly. Lomonosov rushed to Richmann’s house, which had its own machine, to find his colleague dead, having been killed by a blast of bolt lightning – of which Lomonosov then offered the first theoretical model.

Lack of recognition

Why Lomonosov is not better known in the West has something to do with a lack of good material about him not in Russian. His biography – Russia’s Lomonosov by the chemist Boris Menshutkin (the English translation appeared in 1952) – is dry and focuses on Lomonosov’s chemical contributions. The most sensitive account in English, written by physicist Pyotr Kapitsa in 1966 (Soviet Physics Uspekhi 8 720), is but nine pages long.

Furthermore, polymaths tend to be underappreciated both because their ambitions exceed their ability to complete projects, and because we cannot believe that people are able to overflow traditional disciplinary boundaries. My favourite illustration of this is by French historian of chemistry Ferdinand Hoefer, who wrote that “among the Russian chemists who have become known as chemists, we mention Mikhail Lomonosov, who mustn’t be confused with the poet of this name”.

Yet another factor is that some claims made for Lomonosov are hyperbolic, smacking of Cold War assertions of Russian superiority. Lomonosov also made mistakes, notably denying the proportionality of weight and mass. Whether Lomonosov was first to observe the atmosphere of Venus is an interesting controversy bound to be revived next year with the 2012 transit of Venus.

The critical point

Lomonosov worked in almost complete isolation from other scientists or even those who appreciated science. For instance, he had to beg a sponsor to allow him to spend his leisure time conducting chemistry and physics experiments the way others would spend theirs on billiards. Kapitsa also realized that Lomonosov’s genius is partly obscured because he lived in a time and place where the lack of a scientific environment made it easy – and possibly inevitable – for even a genius to go astray. Great science, like great art, requires an educated and demanding audience. This was not present in Russia at the time and one of Lomonosov’s principal contributions was to begin a coupling between science and culture.

We need to remember Lomonosov. Centuries have passed since scientists have needed to struggle for cultural recognition of the importance of science and its beneficial impact on humanity – but that luxury is now being eroded. We may have to take up Lomonosov’s struggle once again.