Scientific institutions and the beginnings of geology in Russia

Abstract

There were three major scientific centres in Russia at the turn of the nineteenth century: the Imperial St Petersburg Academy of Sciences; the Mining Department with its attached Mining School; and the Moscow University. Geology was only then emerging in Russia, where it was mainly focused on mineral prospecting and imported European concepts. However, Alexander I initiated major reforms of science and education, founding new universities in which geological education in Russia found a foothold. The first scientific societies – the Moscow Society of Naturalists and the Mineralogical Society – also played an active role in the consolidation of Russian geology.

The road to Smith: how the Geological Society came to possess English geology

“…", not "Theory of the Earth" ' (see also Albrecht & Ladwig 2002). Werner's descriptions of strata were widely influential, and shaped thinking in Germany, Russia and elsewhere (Guntau 2009;Khain & Malakhova 2009), and certainly had a great impact on the British before 1820. Werner's New Theory of Mineral Veins (1791) had become more accessible with its translation into French in 1802 and English seven years later.…”