President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR
Director of the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute
Sergei Ivanovich VAVILOV.

1946

Vol. XXVIII, issue 1

Advances in the Physical Sciences

![decorative illustration: a physics cabinet/laboratory with optical apparatus]

THE PHYSICS CABINET.—THE PHYSICS LABORATORY.—THE PHYSICS INSTITUTE OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OVER 220 YEARS*)

S. I. VAVILOV

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The decisive significance of experiment in natural science became evident in the seventeenth century not only to scholars, but also to wider circles of lovers of science and of all kinds of “curiosities.” The famous Florentine Accademia del Cimento regarded scientific experiment as its sole aim, and to this day some instruments from the large collection of this Academy have been preserved. The center of the activity of the Royal Society of London was likewise experiments, the performance of which was at first entrusted to R. Hooke.

Traveling through Europe, conversing with scholars and inspecting various collections of rarities, Peter I, with his extraordinary keenness and

*) A report read on June 12, 1945, at the ceremonial meeting of the Academic Council of the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR on the occasion of the Institute’s 220th anniversary.

S. I. Vavilov

with farsightedness understood the role of experiment and of physical instruments. By his order, Andrei Nartov and others purchased and ordered in advance air pumps, electrical machines, telescopes, microscopes, and other optical instruments, and a collection of physical instruments was gradually created, housed in one of the rooms

Peter I. Mosaic portrait by M. V. Lomonosov, 1761.

of the Kunstkamera, opened in 1714. True, it is unlikely that anyone used these instruments before the founding of the Academy. It was scientific equipment without living, knowledgeable people.

But from 1714, in connection with the forthcoming establishment of the Academy of Sciences, activity begins around this collection of physical instruments. Orders are placed with Musschenbroek for new “pneumatics,” and new instruments are expected to arrive on English ships.

In the order of the first President of the Academy, dated December 3, 1726, we read: “By decree of Her Imperial Majesty, the course in physics is to be taught experimentally by Professor Bülfinger. And since the physical instruments are on Vasilievsky Island in the house of the late Tsarina Praskovya Fyodorovna, for this reason it has been ordered...

professors Hermann and Bülfinger to live near that house.” From these lines we learn, first of all, that in 1726 the Physics Cabinet was located in the building of the former palace of Tsaritsa Praskovya Fyodorovna, adjacent to the Kunstkamera, where the entire Academy was housed. It is further clear that

Academician Georg Bernhard Bülfinger (1693–1750)
First director of the Physics Cabinet.

the collected physical instruments began to be used for lecture demonstrations to academic students.

G. B. Bülfinger (1693–1750), consequently, was the first head of the academic Physics Cabinet. In the Petersburg Academy he showed himself to be a versatile physicist-experimenter. The results of his experiments were published in numerous articles in the Commentaries. The experiments concern the sensitivity of barometers and their most advantageous form, the quantitative laws of the rise of liqui-

glasses in “narrow-bore” tubes, air pumps, and measurements of friction. Bülfinger, like his celebrated teacher—and M. V. Lomonosov’s—Wolff (who had recommended him to St. Petersburg), was an anti-Newtonian; therefore, in particular, he also conducted experiments with a liquid model of Cartesian vortices. In Bülfinger’s memoirs, and in the order of the President, who was concerned about the residence of the academician-physicist near the

View of the palace of Tsarina Praskovya Fyodorovna, in which in 1716 the Physics Cabinet and the Kunstkamera were housed, to which the cabinet was soon transferred (after a contemporary engraving by Makhaev).

Physics Cabinet, there are, to a certain extent, reconstructed for us the first steps of the future Physical Institute.

Academician Bülfinger was by no means alone in the new Academy. Along with him, the famous Daniil Bernoulli (1700–1782) was a member of the Academy; he became renowned for his investigations in hydrodynamics (his treatise on hydrodynamics was written in St. Petersburg), mechanics, and acoustics. He was a representative of mathematical physics in the Academy; for this reason he had less need of the Physics Cabinet. Nevertheless, in the first description of the cabinet’s instruments of 1741 there is listed “a small square vessel with various pierced openings, to which motion can be imparted by means of the water flowing out of it; the invention of D. Bernoulli.”

Another colleague of Bülfinger’s, I. G. Leitman (1667–1736), undoubtedly could not have been indifferent to physical instruments. He may be called the father of practical optics and precision mechanics in Russia. He was known already to Peter I as the author of books on clocks and on the grinding of glass. Arriving in St. Petersburg in 1726, he organized workshops, took on Russian pupils, engaged in the manufacture of precision balances, the polishing of lenses with parabolic surfaces, the construction of a Newtonian telescope, and other instruments. It should be noted that from the very beginning of the Academy’s work it possessed an “instrumental expedition” (or “pa-

laboratories”), i.e., workshops with 5–6 masters, mechanics, locksmiths, and carpenters, apparently very skilled. There was also a special “master of mirror and perspective tubes,” Belyaev, Ivan Eliseevich. After his death he was succeeded in this craft by his son Ivan Ivanovich Belyaev. One may think that it was precisely Leitman who initiated the systematic work on practical optics that continued uninterruptedly in the Academy throughout the eighteenth century in the works of Euler, Lomonosov, Aepinus, Kulibin, and others.

Academician Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782).

Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) held the chair of physics at the Academy for some time. Euler’s physics, of course, pales in the rays of his mathematical fame, but in itself, in the eighteenth century, it was perhaps the most systematic and deserves far more attention than it has received up to now. Despite the erroneous character of Euler’s wave optics (longitudinal waves, ignorance of Huygens’ principle and of diffraction), it was precisely this optics that prepared the way for Fresnel’s optics. Dioptric

Euler’s volumes, written in Petersburg, marked a significant turning point in the development of geometrical optics. Letters to a German Princess is a magnificent popular encyclopedia of eighteenth-century physics, full of original ideas. From the excellent Russian translation of these Letters, made by Euler’s pupil, Academician Rumovsky, many generations of Russian people learned physics. On L. Euler’s direct

Academician Johann Georg Leitmann (1667–1736).

work in the Physics Cabinet, no information has been preserved. It is known only that he was present in the Cabinet during some of Kraft’s experiments.

After Euler’s temporary departure abroad, the chair of physics was received by G. V. Kraft (1701–1754). His work in the Academy was entirely connected with the Physics Cabinet. He put the Academy’s Physics Cabinet in order and expanded it. Of his work he writes the following: “Before my appointment to the Academy, the physical instruments, which were in great disorder and confusion, I brought into complete order, which has already been praised and approved by many persons, both local and foreign, who visited the Academy out of curiosity,

the hall). In the proper order, all the physical instruments mentioned were by me, each separately, according to its cabinet and numbering, entered in the corrected catalogue, which has already been printed at the Academy. At various times I reported to the Academy, when there was money in that sum, what useful and newly invented physical instruments from foreign lands

Academician Leonard Euler (1707–1783).

might be ordered, partly in order to perform curious experiments with them, and partly also for the reason that such instruments could be made here as well, as is attested by the reports submitted by me to the Chancellery of the Academy. And since this was indeed done at the Academy as far as possible, in this way, through this, the corpus of local physical instruments suddenly became, by my efforts, the most considerable in all Europe. The aforementioned physical instruments I used in my public lectures at

...of instruction at the Academy for Russian youth, as well as all those who wish to know that science.”

The Commentaries contain a large number of Kraft’s experimental memoirs on questions of hydrodynamics, magnetism, thermometry, heat, and meteorological observations. In a memoir concerning the determination of the force of an outflowing jet of water for the purpose of comparing experiment

DIOPTRICAE

PARS PRIMA

CONTINENS

LIBRUM PRIMUM,

DE

EXPLICATIONE

PRINCIPIORUM,

EX QUIBUS

CONSTRUCTIO TAM TELESCOPIORUM

QUAM

MICROSCOPIORUM

EST PETENDA

AUCTORE

LEONHARDO EULERO

ACAD. SCIENT. BORUSSIAE DIRECTORE VICENNALI ET SOCIO

ACAD. PETROP. PARISIN. ET LOND.

PETROPOLI

Impensis Academiae Imperialis Scientiarum

1769.

Title page of L. Euler’s Dioptrica.

with D. Bernoulli’s theory, Kraft writes: “By order of the illustrious Mr. President of the Academy, I repeated this experiment with all diligence.” Of great interest are the quantitative experiments to determine the attractive force of magnets, carried out, as Kraft writes, “with great patience and care,” and compared with the results of Newton and Muschenbroek. His experiments with Neva ice deserve much attention; he used it to determine the refractive index of ice in comparison with water, and to determine its density and elastic properties.

According to the catalogue of the Physics Cabinet (in the edition Musei Petropolitani, 1741–1745), there were more than 400 instruments. Many of them were made by the Petersburg academicians themselves, with the assistance of academic craftsmen, served for investigations, and were partly described in the Commentaries. Associated with the Cabinet was the Physical Laboratory (or auditorium), consisting of 4 rooms, of which 3 were located in the former palace

LETTERS

on various

PHYSICAL

and

PHILOSOPHICAL

MATTERS,

written

to a certain German

PRINCESS

translated from the French language into Russian

by

STEPAN RUMOVSKY

Member of the Academy of Sciences, Astronomer
and Professor

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

PART ONE.

IN SAINT PETERSBURG

at the Imperial Academy of Sciences
1768

Title page of the first part of Euler’s Letters to a Certain German Princess, translated by Academician S. Ya. Rumovsky (1734–1812). The translation went through 4 editions.

Tsarina Praskovya, and 1 room 46 feet long in the Kunstkamera, everywhere upholstered with black broadcloth and with sliding shutters, closing tightly, for optical experiments. The picture reproduced before the text as a headpiece (see p. 1) and taken from the academic edition of Kraft’s speech of 1742 on the “color harpsichord,” judging by the great specificity of the installation and the room depicted, probably

Academician Georg Wolfgang Kraft (1701–1754).

depicts the optical chamber of the Physics Cabinet in Kraft’s time. This supposition is confirmed by the detailed description of instruments for experiments with a prism in the mentioned catalogue of 1741. In the “Statements of Receipts and Expenditures in the Academy of Sciences” we find entries on the disbursement to Kraft of 8 rubles “for a microscopic chamber,” 10 rubles—“for the purchase of five glass tubes for physical experiments,” etc.

To complete the picture of the state of the Physics Cabinet under Kraft, we note that it included an adjunct and a student. In the register of December 31, 1737, we read that V. E. Adadurov (1709–1780)—a future academician—was an adjunct under Kraft. “His chief intention is to finish studying physics, so that in time he may himself be deemed worthy of the professorial rank. For this purpose he is now studying this science with every diligence and assists Professor Kraft in experiments.”

In the same register it is stated that the student G. V. Richmann “is studying the mathematical sciences, and especially mechanics and physics, and for that purpose attends lectures by the professor of physics, assists him in conducting experiments, and also himself performs various experiments appropriate to those sciences.”

Academician Georg Wilhelm Richmann (1711–1753).

It is known that G. V. Richmann (1711–1753), who became an academician, forever imprinted his name as an experimenter who perished tragically at his post in the name of science. There can be no doubt that Richmann, who took over the Cabinet from Kraft in 1744, devoted to it, as

as a pure experimenter, great attention. He dealt with questions of steam formation, air pumps, and machines for raising water.

WOLFFIAN

EXPERIMENTAL

PHYSICS

from the German original

in the Latin language

abridged,

from which

into the Russian language

translated by

MIKHAIL LOMONOSOV

Printed in the second edition

with additions.

IN SAINT PETERSBURG

at the Imperial Academy of Sciences

1760.

Title page of the second edition of Wolffian Experimental Physics, translated by M. V. Lomonosov. The second edition contains additions with a brief exposition of some of M. V. Lomonosov’s own physical memoirs.

Rikhman turned to electrical experiments long before Franklin. A decree of the academic chancery has been preserved, dated March 26,

1745, in which it is mentioned that there was an order from the court that Richmann show his electrical experiments to the empress. “And for this experiment, and for the placement of the instruments and things required for it, a special chamber is to be assigned at the court, which the Academy is to lock from its own side.” Richmann, after the news of Franklin’s celebrated experiments, took up with great enthusiasm observations of thunderstorms and atmospheric electricity, likewise at his own home, at the corner of the 5th Line and Bolshoi Prospekt of Vasilyevsky Island. The circumstances of Richmann’s death at his home during an experiment on July 26, 1753, are well known.

Academician Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711—1765).

For several years beginning in 1741, after his return from abroad, M. V. Lomonosov (1711—1765) worked in the Physics Cabinet,

then adjunct of the physics class. In our brief sketch it is not possible to give an adequate characterization of the great Russian physicist-chemist, who laid the foundations of the doctrine of the invariability of mass in chemical processes, who gave a remarkable sketch of the kinetic theory of gases, the founder of physical chemistry, and the inventor and designer of a number of original optical instruments. Lomonosov, by right, stood as an equal alongside Euler and Bernoulli, having for the first time shown the breadth and distinctiveness of Russian scientific genius.

Here we shall confine ourselves to facts from the life of M. V. Lomonosov directly connected with the work of the Physics Cabinet. While an adjunct, he relied in his experiments on the Physics Cabinet. In the protocol

WORD

ON THE ORIGIN OF LIGHT

A NEW THEORY

OF COLORS

PRESENTING

IN A PUBLIC ASSEMBLY

OF THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

JULY 1, 1756

COMPOSED

BY MIKHAIL LOMONOSOV.

Printed in Saint Petersburg at the Imperial Academy of Sciences

Title page of M. V. Lomonosov’s “Discourse on the Origin of Light.”

of the Academy of June 25, 1744, there is a report that he conducted physical experiments in the Physics Auditorium (more precisely, laboratory). In December 1744 Lomonosov wrote to the academic chancery: “I intend, for the further investigation of the magnetic theory, to make mag-

sented experiments and observations, for which purpose we need two well-smoothed magnets, not large, and a magnetic needle two feet long, for deflection and for inclination of the magnet.” In May 1746, already a professor of chemistry, Lomonosov requested permission to repair physical instruments and to order everything pertaining to experiments in an “instrumental expedition” under the Academy of Sciences. In the St. Petersburg Gazette of June 25, 1746, there is an announcement that M. V. Lomonosov “began to give public lectures on experimental physics in the Russian language.” An announcement about the continuation of these lectures is also found on August 5. There is no doubt that in these lectures Lomonosov made full use of the Physics Cabinet. In subsequent years Lomonosov, too, probably often had occasion to turn to the Physics Cabinet. At a meeting of the Academy on June 30, 1757, Lomonosov, for example, “announced small weights, with which he intends to perform under the receiver (the bell jar of the air pump.—S. V.) an experiment to prove that rays and sparks under the receiver arise from the motion of the ether, of which he promised to inform the assembly in future.” This Lomonosov could apparently have done only in the Physics Cabinet.

In December 1747 a fire occurred in the Kunstkamera; the tower, the astronomical observatory, and, to some extent, the Physics Cabinet were burned down.1 In 1748 the physics auditorium was transferred to Stroganov’s house, where “rooms” were set aside for it and cupboards were allotted for the instruments. From May 1748 research work had already begun there. However, after Richmann’s death, the “physics chamber” (as the cabinet and auditorium were often called in documents at that time) remained without proper direction, apparently for some time only under the supervision of the student Mikhail Sofronov.

In 1756 the academician F. U. T. Aepinus (1724–1802) was elected to the chair of physics; the Physics Cabinet and the physics chamber passed into his charge. Aepinus was a representative of new currents. In contrast to the Cartesian positions of Bülfinger, Kraft, and Lomonosov, Aepinus, in his theory of electrostatic and magnetic interactions, made use of a Newtonian formalism of attractive and repulsive forces. In addition to the famous treatise An Attempt at a Theory of Electricity and Magnetism (Petersburg, 1759), Aepinus’s name is also associated with other important, purely experimental, physical discoveries. He discovered the pyroelectric properties of tourmaline and constructed the first achromatic microscope, which was kept for a long time in the Physics Cabinet and was transferred, only after the Revolution, to the academic collection of microscopes.

Lomonosov, who differed sharply with Aepinus in his scientific views, nevertheless gave a very flattering assessment of Aepinus’s activity as head of the Physics Cabinet. He wrote to the Academy Chancellery:

“Physical instruments have for many years already lain scattered about in the corners, in mold and rust, without any use either for new academic inventions or even for the reading of physics lectures to students. The collegiate councillor and professor of physics Mr. Aepinus, notwithstanding his position—which requires him not only to maintain the Physics Cabinet, but also to endeavor to supplement it with newly invented instruments—from the very beginning of his academic service has scarcely ever been where the physical instruments are lying about. And he refused the lectures in writing, proposing impossible conditions. The friendly reminder I once made to him turned him into my bitter enemy.”

Title page of the treatise by Academician F. U. T. Aepinus
“Attempt at a Theory of Electricity and Magnetism.”

After Lomonosov’s death, Academician I. A. Euler (1734–1800), the elder son of the great father, was elected professor of physics; he had worked—

...on topics inherited from his father in the fields of the theory of electricity, the calculation of optical systems, improvements in the theory of the motion of the Moon, and so on.

There is no information about the experiments of the younger Euler. Soon after his election to the Academy he became its permanent secretary, and, according to Academician V. V. Petrov, “did not have physics as a substantial subject of his studies.” He had no influence on the work and development of the Physics Cabinet and laboratories.

From 1771 the management of the Cabinet passed to Login Yur’evich Kraft (1743—1814), the son of the elder Kraft. He accomplished incomparably more in science than the younger Euler. The subjects of his works (predominantly theoretical) were usual for the last quarter of the eighteenth century in Europe and in the school of Leonhard Euler: the theory of electricity and magnetism, galvanism, the optics of achromatic systems, and the motion of the Moon.

Kraft understood the management of the Cabinet chiefly as the replenishment of its collections; he himself, apparently, lacked time for experimentation. The chief object of his activities was the education of the grand dukes in Gatchina and Pavlovsk.

At the end of the eighteenth century the Physics Cabinet was transferred from Stroganov’s house back to the Kunstkamera, where it huddled in cramped and damp quarters.

Modern view of the building of the former Kunstkamera. In this building the Physics Cabinet was housed until 1828.

Kraft raised the question of moving the Cabinet to another room, pointing out that “the collection of instruments of such a kind as the Academy now possesses indisputably deserves this distinction, which will at the same time also contribute to bringing honor to the Academy.” The condition of the Physics Cabinet at the end of the century apparently caused general concern. Academician N. Ya. Ozeretskovsky, professor of natural history (1750—1827), wrote: “In order that the Academy be useful to the state, it is absolutely necessary to arouse and support activity in all its members, providing them with means for ...”

“... to discoveries new in the sciences ... Therefore it is necessary that physics have a cabinet, supplied with the best instruments for carrying out physical experiments and containing them in good order.”

The academician-chemist Ya. D. Zakharov (1765–1836) in 1796 submitted a project for creating a laboratory in a separate building, where it would be possible to engage in experimentation in physics and chemistry. The Academy at that time regarded the project skeptically, finding it too “original” (d’après ses propres idées). The reform of the cabinet was postponed to the nineteenth century.

The last academician-physicist elected in the eighteenth century was A. K. Kononov (1766–1795). He studied in Göttingen and, according to numerous surviving competent reviews, was a very capable and talented scholar. For three years (1793–1795) Kononov delivered public lectures on experimental physics, probably relying on the Physics Cabinet.

An early death, at the age of 29, however, cut short the scientific development of A. K. Kononov. Only four memoirs by Kononov have survived: three of them on mathematical questions and one on a new design of an air thermometer. There is no information about Kononov’s own experimental works.

Summing up the development of academic physics in eighteenth-century Petersburg, one may say that, despite many shortcomings, it occupied an honorable place in Europe. One should bear in mind the general state of physics in that epoch. It was a time of elaborating the great ideas left by Newton: on the one hand, their development and consolidation; on the other, criticism. The eighteenth century did not leave behind major new fundamental results equal to Newton’s. Electro-magnetostatics and optics (predominantly geometrical) advanced very considerably. Much preparatory work in the eighteenth century concerned the doctrine of heat, but nevertheless the fundamentally new and great things in electromagnetism, optics, and heat were destined to be done by physicists of the nineteenth century. Against this general background, the works of Euler, Lomonosov, and Aepinus in the field of the doctrine of light and geometrical optics apparently occupy first place. In Petersburg the ground was prepared for the development of the theory of light waves, and in the practical sphere—for the calculation of achromatic systems.

The theory of electricity and magnetism developed by Aepinus had a very great influence. Petersburg experimental physics owes much to the development of molecular physics, the doctrine of gases and liquids, capillary phenomena and heat (especially in Lomonosov’s works). In Petersburg, Academician Braun was, among other things, the first to freeze mercury.

But, besides its influence on world science, academic physics performed a most important task within the country. Until the end of the century, physicists in the Academy of Sciences had to devote great attention to technical questions. Practical optics and questions of the construction of optical instruments on Vasilyevsky Island in the eighteenth century stood at such a height that any country in the world could have envied it. The works of Leitman

with his pupils, Lomonosov’s optical workshop, the studies in geometrical optics by Euler and his pupils, Aepinus’s achromatic microscope, telescopes, Kulibin’s lighting reflectors—all this was the most advanced for its time.

The Petersburg academician-physicists conducted systematic meteorological and magnetic observations, gave consultations on various machines imported into and invented in the country, including, inevitably, perpetual-motion machines, and on construction work. The same academicians also bore considerable teaching responsibilities, the training of academic students.

Speaking in modern terms, the “material base” for all this extensive activity was the Physics Cabinet with its collections and “chambers,” i.e., laboratory and lecture hall. In the Cabinet experimental research was carried out, demonstrations were prepared for students and for showings at meetings of the Academy and at court. Around the cabinets, first filled with instruments under Peter, laboratory life began to take root—sometimes, as under Beolfinger, Krafft, Lomonosov, and Richmann, quite intense; at other times, as under the younger Euler and Krafft, almost dying away. Yet from the very foundation of the Academy, and in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this main core around which experimental academic physics developed never ceased its activity.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND THE PRE-REVOLUTIONARY YEARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

By the end of the eighteenth century, with the help of and thanks to the Academy of Sciences, a substantial non-academic science had grown up in Russia—the science of the universities and of specialized higher schools, for example the Medical-Surgical Academy. Industry was gradually developing in the country; the new great power of capital was clearly beginning to make itself felt, presenting to science, including and above all to physics, substantial practical demands. This same factor manifested itself still more strongly in the West, causing an increased growth of scientific and technical work.

It has already been indicated what anxieties the unsatisfactory state of the experimental physical base in the Academy aroused among the academicians. The head of the Physics Cabinet, Academician Krafft, submitted repeated memoranda to the Conference on the need to provide new, more spacious and convenient premises for the Cabinet; he acquired new large collections of instruments. However, Krafft’s petitions met with no success, and the new collections, accumulating in cupboards, remained dead inventory and were used very little.

From 1795 onward, the Cabinet of the newly formed Medical-Surgical Academy, which was under the charge of the “provincial” Professor V. V. Petrov, began to compete very successfully with the Physics Cabinet of the Academy of Sciences. A native of the town of Oboyan, V. V. Petrov

graduated from the Petersburg Teachers’ Gymnasium, taught mathematics and physics at the Mining School in Barnaul, and then in the Engineering Cadet Corps in Petersburg. In 1795 he became extraordinary professor at the Medical-Surgical Academy. Here he assembled a Physics Cabinet exemplary for its time, where his principal experimental works were carried out. They are collected in three books: 1) Collection of New Physico-Chemical Experiments and Observations, 1801,

OBSERVATIONS

on the evaporation of snow and ice at known places at various degrees of cold.

A composition by Vasilii Petrov.

Presented to the Academy on March 20, 1815.

Many investigators of nature have tried to ascertain by their own observations whether evaporation from ice takes place in greater or lesser cold. Of the ancients, Pliny the Elder (C. Plinius Secundus), the well-known Roman naturalist, was perhaps the first to note that evaporation from ice ceaselessly occurs a). The English physicist Robert Boyle, famous in his time, was hardly among the moderns the first also, who, in this respect, made many observations, of which in one, made over a very cold night, he noticed that a piece of ice, weighing about two ounces, in this one night lost from its weight no less than 10 grains b). Mariotte ascertained that a piece of ice, brought into equilibrium on a balance, continuously became lighter. Claude Perrault, a Parisian physician, well known in his time, placed in 1664 in an immobile vessel on the surface of the earth, when exposed to cold air, 4 pounds of water, which then froze, and after 18 days the weight of the ice formed from it had diminished by a whole pound c). Gome-

a) Hist. Natur. lib. 31. cap. 3.
b) Notae de atmosphaeris corporum consistentium, pag. 4. Genevae 1680.
c) Hist. Acad. reg. Sc. L. 1, S. 6, C. 3, §. 5.

First page of the memoir by Academician V. V. Petrov from the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, 1881, part I, pp. 81–87.

2) Report on Galvani-Voltaic Experiments, 1803, and 3) New Electrical Experiments, 1804. These volumes contain an enormous amount of experimental material, collected for the refutation of the theory of phlogiston, for elucidating the nature of various cases of luminescence, and for describing various luminous phenomena observed during the passage of galvanic current, on electrostatics, etc.

Unlike Lomonosov, Petrov was not inclined toward broad generalizations; he was an empiricist, who nevertheless set up his experiments rationally and thoughtfully.

V. V. Petrov did not pass unnoticed in the Academy of Sciences: in 1802 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy and, undoubtedly, began to take an active part in its life. Contrary to the generally accepted and constantly repeated opinion that no one (including V. V. Petrov himself) paid due attention to the description, in the second of the books mentioned, of his remarkable experiment with the glow appearing between charcoals connected to the poles of “an enormous battery,” an experiment that constituted the discovery of the voltaic arc, the following may be pointed out. In 1804 the Academy of Sciences announced a prize on the question of the nature of light ^1). In the announcement of 1804 (i.e., one year after the appearance of V. V. Petrov’s book) we read the following (we quote in Russian translation): “Without entering into an exposition of the objections raised against this (chemical—S. V.) hypothesis and without touching upon the investigations undertaken with the aim of discovering traces of the action of chemical affinity of light matter for various kinds of bodies, the Academy notes only that these investigations might usefully be extended to the galvanic fire, the blinding brilliance of which, in the case of large voltaic piles and carbonized substances, is to a certain degree similar to sunlight” (the italics are ours—S. V.). Here, in the competition announcement, only a year later, the discovery of V. V. Petrov is described in German (though without mention of his name); and moreover in an announcement that was rather widely disseminated in Europe, as may be judged from a number of works that arrived from abroad for the competition.

We have cited this interesting episode, which has remained unknown until now, in order to point out that V. V. Petrov, while still a corresponding member of the Academy, was closely connected with it and that the Russian priority in the discovery of the voltaic arc was known in Europe as early as 1804. In 1807 he was elected adjunct, and in 1809 extraordinary, and in 1815 ordinary, academician. For the Academy of that time, however, he was a stranger, educated and grown up outside academic traditions. It is characteristic already that all the books and memoirs of V. V. Petrov, without a single exception, were written in Russian (the competition announcement quoted above was written in German, probably by Kraft). Apparently, only V. V. Petrov’s extensive experience in organizing the Physical Cabinet of the Medical-Surgical Academy compelled Kraft to agree to the acceptance of Petrov as adjunct.

Kraft imposed the following conditions on Petrov: “1) To carry out meteorological observations in such a manner as the Academy shall find them useful. 2) Together with me, to have oversight of the Physical Cabinet and to keep it in proper order, and moreover in such a way that,

^1) Ueber die Natur des Lichts. St. Petersburg, 1808.

so that it would be possible to repeat new experiments worthy of attention and to show them both to the learned gentlemen of the Academy and to foreign amateurs of physics... Therefore it will be necessary to assign him a suitable state apartment near the Physics Cabinet...”

The nature of V. V. Petrov’s work at the Academy of Sciences may be judged from the recommendation submitted by a number of academicians for V. V. Petrov’s election as a full academician in 1815. There we read: “To the other merits of Mr. Petrov in the field of physics it should be added: 1) that from June 1807 to February 1812 he was engaged in making meteorological observations and in compiling from them extracts for experiments and the calendar. 2) During the course of five years he has been occupied with excellent activity and zeal in bringing into the best possible condition and enriching the Physics Cabinet of this Academy. 3) Since his election as adjunct he has hitherto fulfilled all duties in the field of physics, as well as various commissions given to him by the learned assembly at different times; and always with all promptness, diligence, and accuracy.” It is further indicated that, having at his disposal in the Medical-Surgical Academy a rich physics cabinet, he “endeavored to make use of numerous opportunities for the greater improvement of his knowledge in physics and for acquiring special skill in performing with proper accuracy various most important experiments relating to this science.” During his work at the Academy of Sciences Petrov published several memoirs, partly continuing his earlier investigations on the combustion of bodies and on luminescence, and partly new ones: the evaporation of snow and ice, the combustion of phosphorus, and so forth. He also printed a series of his meteorological observations. For more than 15 years Petrov waged a struggle for the improvement of the Physics Cabinet and its transformation into a research laboratory, but met with complete indifference. Petrov’s work ended in a break with the Academy after a sharp clash with the new academician-physicist E. I. Parrot (1767–1852).

The first quarter of the nineteenth century thus proved to be very difficult in the history of academic physics and, in particular, of the Physics Cabinet. Circumstances, however, improved considerably after the appearance at the Academy of Parrot, a professor from Dorpat, an Alsatian and a personal friend of Alexander I. He came to the Academy already in his declining years. The range of his scientific activity was very broad: various questions of technology (in particular, illumination engineering), measuring instruments, physical optics, electromagnetism, and so on, with excursions into physical geography, mineralogy, etc. In his large memoir of 1834, “The Telegraph, Completely Founded on Physical Principles,” Parrot, in particular, describes in detail his system of optical telegraph, which in 1810 and 1812 he demonstrated to Alexander I. In Parrot’s memoirs one often encounters very bold and erroneous hypotheses, but at the same time Parrot loved and valued precise experiment, and the Physics Cabinet of the Academy was indebted to him for very much. Having taken over the Physics Cabinet from Petrov, he set about its reorganization with great energy. Relying on his connections at

in the court and in the leadership of the Academy, Parrot finally succeeded, after more than twenty years of insistent efforts by Kraft and Petrov, in securing the transfer in 1828 of the Cabinet from the Kunstkamera to the Main Building of the Academy, where it—and later the Physical Laboratory and Institute that grew out of it—remained until the transfer of the Academy of Sciences to Moscow in 1934.

Academician Egor Ivanovich Parrot (1767–1852).
Reorganizer of the Physical Cabinet (1828).

Parrot received relatively very large funds for equipping the cabinet—25 thousand rubles. The style and scale of the new Parrot cabinet may be judged from the excellent large, capacious cupboards for instruments, made according to Parrot’s own drawings and still serving to store the principal property of the Physical Institute of the Academy. In essence, from this time on the Cabinet became a physical laboratory in the modern sense of the word,

In the official organ of the Academy, Comptes Rendus, in the fifties the Physics Cabinet appears in the list of the Academy’s principal scientific institutes. Apparently, a very large role in its actual transformation was played first by Parrot’s assistant, and then by the adjunct and soon academician E. Kh. Lenz (1804–1865). In the memoir of 1832, “Experiments with High Pressure on Various Bodies,” published in the names of Parrot and Lenz, Parrot writes concerning Lenz: “I testify to him my gratitude with all the greater pleasure, since the weakening of my eyesight and the generally painful condition brought on by this winter forced me to entrust to him the most delicate and tedious observations. In old age it is a comfort to prepare young scholars who replace us and help us with such skill and courtesy as Mr. Lenz has already repeatedly shown.” The large article describes a variety of experiments with an apparatus specially made for the Physics Cabinet of the Academy. The memoir ends with a characteristic note in the name of Lenz alone: “Since I by no means share the opinions of the distinguished author of this memoir and a number of the consequences and assertions contained in it, I do not consider it superfluous to state here that it was a pleasure and a duty for me to assist my esteemed teacher in his experiments constituting this memoir, but that I took no part in the explanation of the results or in the composition of the memoir itself.”

View of the Kunstkamera and the Main Building of the Academy in the forties of the last century (contemporary engraving).

This respectful polemic on the pages of the academic Bulletin shows quite clearly the transition from the somewhat fantastic and romantic physics of old Parrot to the new, rigorous style of the young Lenz. Lenz forever inscribed his name in the history of electromagnetism alongside Oersted, Ampère, and Faraday. His

the famous “rule by which magnetoelectric phenomena are reduced to electromagnetic ones” still amazes us with its depth and its instinctive anticipation of the law of conservation of energy. In all his numerous experimental works Lenz impresses the reader by his powers of observation, precision, and depth of deduction. These works form an unbroken chain, in many respects retaining their significance for modern electrical engineering. The reorganized Physics Cabinet served as the basis for the scientific work of Lenz and of his pupils and collaborators (Savel’ev, Jacobi, and others). But Lenz’s activity was not confined to the Academy: he was a professor at Petersburg University, at the Pedagogical Institute, and at the Artillery Academy, and the author of a physics textbook. The activity of the Petersburg school of physicists (F. F. Petrushevskii, O. D. Khvol’son, I. I. Borgman, and others) was for many years determined by the influence of Lenz and Jacobi.

Academician Emil Khristianovich Lenz (1804–1865).

B. S. Jacobi (1801–1874) became, in 1839, an adjunct of the Academy, first in the department of practical mechanics, and from 1842 an ordinary ...

became an academician in technology and applied chemistry, and only in 1855 an ordinary academician in physics. Yet, despite these seemingly different specialties, Jacobi’s work in Petersburg was from the very beginning concentrated in the Physics Cabinet. Together with Lenz he carried out a series of experiments on questions of electromagnetism. Speaking in modern language, Jacobi, in almost all areas of his activity,

ÜBER

DIE GESETZE DER WÄRME-ENTWICKELUNG

DURCH

DEN GALVANISCHEN STROM

VON

E. LENZ.

Aus dem Bulletin de la classe physico-mathématique de l’Académie Impériale des sciences de St.-Pétersbourg
Tiré I, No. 14, 15, 16 besonders abgedruckt

ST.-PETERSBURG
GEDRUCKT BEI KAISERLICH AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN.
1843.

Title page of a separate offprint of the memoir by Academician E. Kh. Lenz.

whatever he discovered—electroplating, electric machines, the electric telegraph, electrical standards—was a technical physicist. Jacobi was one of the most remarkable representatives of that new phase in the history of physics, when its results at once, in the form of an effective factor, passed into technology, and electromagnetism was transformed into electrical engineering. In 1833 Jacobi and Lenz made trial runs on the Neva in a motor boat they had built with an engine developing—

…consisting of 64 elements, Grove’s one horsepower. In the Physics Cabinet various new telegraph apparatuses were built and tested, and galvanoplastics developed in different forms, remarkable specimens of which are preserved in the Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences. The physicist Jacobi consults on the gilding of copper sheets for the dome of a church in Moscow, takes part in the decorations of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, together with Lenz draws up a design for a lightning conductor for a powder magazine, and is the inventor of electric mine detonators. The name of Academician Jacobi—an outstanding physicist, a brilliant electrical engineer and inventor—rightfully deserves to be placed alongside the other glorious names of academicians-physicists: Lomonosov, Euler, Aepinus, and Petrov. Jacobi’s capacity for work was extraordinarily great; even during the last two years of his life, when because of illness he ceased experimental work in the Physics Cabinet, he carried it on at home until the final day of his life.

Academician Boris Semyonovich Jacobi (1801–1874).

After the death of B. S. Jacobi, the new academician-physicist, General A. V. Gadolin (1828–1892), declined to take charge of the Physics Cabinet.

Experimental physics in no way corresponded to his immediate specialties—artillery science and crystallography with mineralogy. Elected director of the Cabinet was the outstanding physicist

CORRESPONDANCE.

(Dans la séance du 5 octobre, M. Fuss communiqua à l’Académie une lettre dans laquelle M. le professeur Jacobi lui fait part d’une découverte que le hasard lui a fait faire, et qui, avec le tems, peut devenir importante pour l’art chalcographie. La pile galvanique employée par M. Jacobi dans ses travaux actuels a cela de remarquable que le gaz hydrogène qui, dans les appareils voltaïques ordinaires, se développe sur la plaque négative ou de cuivre, est employé ici à la réduction d’une solution saturée de sulfate de cuivre. L’état de cohésion, dans lequel se représente ce cuivre réduit, dépend de l’intensité du courant galvanique. Si ce courant est faible et l’action lente, le cuivre se réduit sous une forme parfaitement cohérente et obtient plus ou moins de densité; un courant plus fort, au contraire, opère une réduction plus rapide, et alors le cuivre se précipite en grains groupés sans ordre et offrant l’apparence d’une forme crystalline. C’est en nettoyant les appareils galvaniques, que M. Jacobi s’est aperçu que le cuivre réduit pouvait se détacher en forme de plaques parfaitement cohérentes, et que toutes les inégalités accidentelles, dont la surface de la plaque modèle est affectée, se trouvent fidèlement empreintes sur celles-là. Un essai fait avec une plaque modèle gravée, recouverte d’une couche très-mince d’huile, a donné une plaque de cuivre réduit sur laquelle jusqu’aux plus faibles traits gravés sur la plaque modèle se trouvent reproduits en relief avec une parfaite netteté. M. Fuss fit voir cette plaque.)

Preliminary communication on the discovery of electrotyping by Academician B. S. Jacobi. Bull. de l’Ac. de Sc. IV, No. 23, 24, p. 368, 1838.

and the meteorologist H. I. Wild (1883—1902), organizer of the Swiss and Russian meteorological networks, investigator of terrestrial magnetism, and author of a series of remarkable works that have retained their significance to the present—

present day, photometric and polarimetric instruments. A Swiss by birth, G. I. Wild gave Russia 27 of the best creative years of his life. Before Wild, the Russian meteorological network numbered

GALVANOPLASTICS

or

A METHOD,

according to given models, to produce copper articles from copper solutions, by means of galvanism

M. G. Jacobi.

Doctor of Philosophy, Court Councillor and member of the IMPERIAL Academy of Sciences.

With one drawing.

SAINT PETERSBURG.
in the printing house of I. Glazunov and Co.
1840.

Title page of the popular book by Academician Jacobi,
“Galvanoplastics,” 1840.

only 31 stations; at the time of his departure for Switzerland it had 650 stations of the 2nd rank, equipped with new instruments. Wild himself traveled about Russia, sometimes by cart, organizing new meteorological centers. He reorganized the Main Physical Observatory; the Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory was built in Pavlovsk—his pride—

ness. The role of G. I. Wild in the Russian meteorological service is truly enormous.

Carried away by the scale and prospects of this great undertaking, Wild could devote only a small amount of time directly to physics. During his tenure as head of the Physics Cabinet, G. I. Wild nevertheless did not

Academician Heinrich Ivanovich Wild (1833–1902).

cease making improvements and found new applications for his famous polaristrobometer, photometers, and spectrophotometer. To a certain extent he restored the glorious tradition of the development of optics in the Academy, so characteristic of academic physics of the eighteenth century and interrupted mainly by the purely electromagnetic investigations of Lenz and Jacobi.

Because of G. I. Wild’s busy schedule, the actual director of the Physics Cabinet after Jacobi’s death became the young privatdozent of St. Petersburg University, O. D. Khvolson (1852–1934). Here he

completed the work begun by Jacobi, concerning a new type of mercury rheostat, and investigated the influence of heating, pressure, and stretching on the resistance of wires. The text of the last work begins with the following words:

Plate with an illustration of the improved polaristrobometer of Academician G. I. Wild from his memoir in Mélanges phys. et chim. VIII, issue I, p. 33, 1869.

words: “In the winter of 1878/79 this work was carried out in the Physics Cabinet of the Academy of Sciences with the consent of Mr. Director G. Wild and with the successive assistance of Messrs. students Strauss, Onoshko, and Mikhailovsky.” At the Academy, too, other numerous experimental

the work of O. D. Khvolson in the field of electromagnetism, continuing the tradition of Lenz and Jacobi. Probably on the initiative and under the influence of G. I. Wild, O. D. Khvolson carried out a large series of optical works: a photometric investigation of internal diffusion (i.e., scattering of light), and a study of Wild’s polarization photometer.

Honorary Academician Orest Danilovich Khvolson
(1852–1934).

an important work, opening up new paths, on the mathematical theory of scattering, etc. On the initiative of G. I. Wild, O. D. Khvolson also began his well-known works on actinometry. In the Physics Cabinet O. D. Khvolson for a long time did not hold a regular position and only in 1883 received the post of laboratory assistant (at that time this position

covered, approximately, the functions of deputy director). The old inventories of the Cabinet are written entirely in his hand.

The activity of O. D. Khvolson in the Physics Cabinet continued approximately until 1893, until the appearance in the Academy, as adjunct, of B. B. Golitsyn (1862–1916). Elected in 1896 as an extraordinary academician in the department of physics, Lieutenant General M. A. Rykachev (1840–1919) worked almost exclusively in the field of geophysics and meteorology, being, from 1896, director of the Main Geophysical Observatory. He had no influence on the development of academic physics in the narrow sense.

In 1893, on the recommendation of Wild and a number of other academicians, B. B. Golitsyn was elected adjunct of the Academy. He was one of the talented representatives of the well-known experimental Strasbourg school of physics, from which came P. N. Lebedev, V. A. Ulyanin, D. A. Goldhammer, A. A. Eichenwald, S. Ya. Tereshin, G. G. de Metz, and later L. I. Mandelstam and N. D. Papaleksi. In his autobiography Golitsyn writes of himself in the third person: “In Strasbourg Golitsyn became especially close and made friends with the late P. N. Lebedev, with whom he maintained friendly relations until Lebedev’s very death... P. N. Lebedev and Golitsyn rented a room from one and the same landlady and were always in close contact with one another; they dined together, and the subject of their conversations was for the most part some scientific question.” Having returned to Russia, P. N. Lebedev became the founder of the large Moscow school of physicists, transferring to his laboratory a number of Strasbourg traditions. At the beginning of 1894 Golitsyn was entrusted with the management of the Academy’s Physics Cabinet, which he gradually transformed into a laboratory, also to a certain extent on the Strasbourg model. By the will of historical circumstances, the successors of the Lebedev and Golitsyn laboratories were destined to be united in 1934 in Moscow, in the building of the Physical Institute, on Third Miusskaya Street.

Golitsyn describes as follows the condition of the Physics Cabinet which he took over in 1894: “In recent years this cabinet had fallen somewhat into decline, since almost no one was working in it, and therefore its new director had first of all to take care of putting it in order and of supplementing it with new and more modern instruments; this supplementation was carried out successively over the course of a whole series of subsequent years. In the same year 1894, three rooms on the basement floor of the Academy were attached to the Cabinet, in which special solid pillars were installed on separate foundations, intended to serve for more refined and delicate observations. The mechanical workshop attached to the cabinet gradually began to improve; now it occupies three rooms, in which a whole number of mechanics work. In the Physics Cabinet experimental work was resumed, in which, besides Golitsyn and his laboratory assistants, many other outside persons also took part.”

Let us give a list of these “outside persons” who carried out various experimental works under Golitsyn. These were, among others,

E. Schtakelberg (1895), A. B. Feringer (1896), V. N. Nikolaev (1896–1911), E. G. Rosenthal (1901–1902), T. A. Afanas’eva-Ehrenfest (1901), N. A. Bulgakov and I. D. Tykotsiner (1908), V. Ya. Pavlinov (1909–1910), Rausch von Traubenberg (1909). The subjects of the work carried out were very diverse: the solubility of salts under high pressures, the resistance of carbon contacts as a function of current strength,

Academician Boris Borisovich Golitsyn (1862–1916).

various problems of electrostatics and electrodynamics, electrical oscillations, radiotelegraphy, the influence of electrical discharges on the appearance of the spectra of metals.

The old Physics Cabinet, in which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries academicians usually carried out their experiments alone or only with an assistant, was transformed into a lively laboratory with a small permanent staff and a large number of volunteer workers. Officially the Cabinet was renamed the Laboratory only in 1912, but already in the nineties, in all Golitsyn’s printed works, it was always called the Physics Laboratory, and sometimes the Institute. The equipment ...

was, as has already been said, renewed. Suffice it to say that at that time the Laboratory received a first-class Michelson echelon and a spectral apparatus with a Rowland grating. Golitsyn’s personal work after his transfer to the Academy at first proceeded in various directions (the critical state of matter, X-rays, spectroscopy, physiological optics). Of great interest and importance are the optical

Proceedings of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. — 1907.
(Bulletin de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St.-Pétersbourg).

Experimental Test of Doppler’s Principle for Light Rays

By B. Galitzin (Golitsyn) and J. Wilip.

The first attempt to subject the Doppler principle for light rays to an experimental test with laboratory means was made by A. Belopolsky1. For this purpose he had a special apparatus constructed, which consisted of two systems of light wheels coupled in pairs. Each pair contained 8 mirrors, which were fixed near the periphery of the wheels. With the aid of special electric motors these two systems of mirrors could be set into very rapid rotation, the directions of motion of the two systems being opposite. These wheels with mirrors were so arranged that an incident beam of light could undergo several reflections at the silvered reflecting glass plates. By inclining the direction of the incident bundle of rays, the number of reflections could be varied at will.

If \(\lambda\) denotes the wavelength of the incident radiation, \(v_1\) the linear velocity of the center of the mirrors, \(V\) the velocity of light, and \(n\) the number of reflections, then, according to Doppler’s principle, after the \(n\)-th reflection the wavelength of the incident light ray must undergo a change \(\delta\lambda\), where, with a sufficient approximation,

\[ \delta\lambda=\mp 2n\frac{v_1}{V}\lambda \ldots\ldots\ldots\ldots\ldots (1). \]

may be set.

First page of the memoir by Academician B. B. Golitsyn and I. Wilip, “Experimental Test of Doppler’s Principle for Light Rays,” 1907.

works of B. B. Golitsyn, carried out by him together with I. I. Wilip. Among them, of special significance is the experimental proof of the optical Doppler phenomenon, continuing and to a high degree refining the experiments of A. A. Belopolsky and observations of the fine structure of spectral lines. Beginning in 1902, Golitsyn became interested in questions of seismometry. He reorganized the Russian seismic service, seis-

his system’s seismographs were adopted at all Russian seismic stations and at many foreign ones. In 1911 Golitsyn delivered, in the Physics Cabinet, a course of lectures on seismometry, which constituted the well-known classic course in seismometry. At the Physics Cabinet (later the Laboratory), 15 people completed the full course in the theory and practice of seismometric observations.

Prince B. Golitsyn.

LECTURES ON SEISMOMETRY.

Fürst B. Galitzin.

VORLESUNGEN ÜBER SEISMOMETRIE.

St. Petersburg.
Printing House of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.
Vas. Isl., 9th Line, No. 16
1912

Title page of “Lectures on Seismometry” by Academician
B. B. Golitsyn, 1912.

B. B. Golitsyn died on the eve of the revolution, in 1916, as if drawing a line under the development of the old pre-revolutionary academic physics.

By the eve of the October Revolution, the Academy’s Physics Cabinet had developed into a fairly large laboratory with two principal areas of work—spectroscopic and seismometric.

The development of the Academy’s old experimental physics center, despite occasional temporary periods of decline, proceeded systematically along the path of transforming an individual laboratory into a scientific collective. If, at the same time, one compares the chain of names—V. V. Petrov, E. Kh. Lenz, B. S. Jacobi, G. I. Wild, O. D. Khvolson, and B. B. Golitsyn—then the important place of academic physics in the nineteenth century and in the pre-revolutionary years becomes clear.

THE SOVIET YEARS

The unprecedented rise of culture, science, and technology in Russia during the revolutionary years at first affected the development of physics in the Academy of Sciences in a very distinctive way. As early as the end of the eighteenth century, physics in the country naturally began to grow also outside the Academy, though undoubtedly under the great influence of the Academy. From outside the Academy, V. V. Petrov and B. B. Golitsyn, in particular, came to it. However, non-academic physics reached its full growth only toward the end of the nineteenth century and especially in the pre-revolutionary years. P. N. Lebedev’s laboratory in Moscow, the brilliant beginning of the activity of D. S. Rozhdestvensky at Petersburg University and of A. F. Ioffe at the Polytechnic Institute, good physical schools in Kazan, Kiev, Tomsk, Odessa, and other cities—all this together constituted a great new force, qualitatively and quantitatively often surpassing academic physics. On the other hand, an antagonism between university and academic physics in Russia had long since begun to appear (approximately from the second half of the nineteenth century).

It manifested itself in sharp form, for example, in relation to B. B. Golitsyn. This antagonism had, to some extent, a class character. The Academy was perceived, and in part actually was, a citadel of official, noble culture and science. Conversely, Russian universities, and higher education in general, had long since become a support for the ideology of the raznochintsy intelligentsia and the liberal bourgeoisie. Of course, this is only a general scheme: both in the Academy and in the universities there were sharp deviations from this average rule.

In connection with this, in the first revolutionary years the Russian scientific community especially welcomed the creation of research institutes independent of the Academy.

In Moscow, during the first revolutionary decade, research work was concentrated chiefly in the Institute of Physics and Biophysics, headed by Academician P. P. Lazarev, but only loosely connected with the Academy. In Petrograd, two large physical institutes quickly grew up—the Physico-Technical Institute and the State Optical Institute, headed by A. F. Ioffe and D. S. Rozhdestvensky; they gathered and trained talented young people and in many respects determined the successes of Soviet physics in the following decades.

The Academy’s Physical Laboratory, in comparison with the growth of the new non-academic institutes, developed much more weakly. After the death

After B. B. Golitsyn, over the course of a year the leadership of the laboratory passed successively from the geophysicist I. A. Rykachev to the chemist N. S. Kurnakov. In September 1917, on the eve of the October Revolution, the new academician-physicist P. P. Lazarev (1878–1942) was elected director of the Physical Laboratory. However, his broad and original work on questions of photochemistry, biological physics, and geophysics took place entirely in Moscow, in the Institute of Physics and Biophysics of the People’s Commissariat of Health, located in the new building on Miusskaya Square, constructed with funds collected by Moscow society in 1912 for the laboratory of P. N. Lebedev.

Academician Pyotr Petrovich Lazarev (1878–1942).

When, at the end of 1917, Petrograd was under threat of capture by the Germans, it was decided to evacuate the Physical Laboratory of the Academy to Moscow, to Miussy.

Some particularly valuable instruments were indeed temporarily moved there.

The scientific activity of the Physical Laboratory during the directorship of P. P. Lazarev manifested itself, in particular, in the successful participation of a group of laboratory staff members, under the leadership of B. B. Golitsyn’s closest assistant P. M. Nikiforov, in an expedition for the gravitational study of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly with Eötvös’s apparatus (1921).

Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR
Pavel Mikhailovich Nikiforov (1884–1944).

A difficult situation arose for the Physical Laboratory of the Academy: it had no permanent scientific leadership and developed slowly, while in Petrograd and Moscow three large non-academic physical institutions were growing and being equipped very rapidly.

institute, two of which were headed by physicist-academicians. All this compelled urgent measures. In 1921, on the initiative of Academicians V. A. Steklov, A. N. Krylov, and A. F. Ioffe, the Conference of the Academy adopted a resolution on the creation of the Physico-Mathematical Institute on the basis of the Physical Laboratory and the Mathematical Cabinet.

Academician Vladimir Andreevich Steklov (1863–1926).

Cabinet. V. A. Steklov was elected Director of the Institute, and remained so until his death in 1926. The Institute consisted of three departments—the Physical, the Mathematical, and the Seismological, with a computing bureau and a network of 11 seismic stations.

In the person of B. B. Golitsyn, diverse physical activity and seismometry were united into one whole; with his death this connection ceased; the three departments of the institute led a rather isolated existence, and while the mathematical and seismometric departments worked and developed normally, the condition of the physical

the department became still more difficult than before. In fact, experimental work in physics almost ceased for several years; the equipment was neither replenished nor renewed. The two hundred thousand gold rubles allocated by the Government to the Academy for the equipment of the Physico-Mathematical Institute were scarcely used.

After the death of V. A. Steklov, the director of the Physico-Mathematical Institute for two years (1926–1928) was Academician

A. F. Ioffe, who subsequently, because of his enormous work at the Physico-Technical Institute, could not devote sufficient attention to the Academic Institute. In connection with this, in 1928 Academician A. N. Krylov was elected director of the Institute, remaining in this post until 1932. In October 1928, its largest division, the Seismic Department, was separated from the Physico-Mathematical Institute and became an independent Seismological Institute. The entire staff of the remaining Physico-Mathematical Institute consisted of a director, two heads of departments, and 4 scientific workers. For a time (1931–1932) there was even a tendency toward transforming the Physics Department

into a purely theoretical center, connected mainly with the Mathematical Division of the Institute.

Describing this difficult period in the life of academic physics, one may nevertheless note with satisfaction that even in those years work of great theoretical and technical significance was carried out in the Physical Division of the Institute—research into the nature of the latent photographic image (the head of the Physical Division, T. P. Kravets, later a corresponding member of the Academy, and M. V. Savost’yanova). It was possible to show experimentally that the process of formation of a latent image in crystals of silver bromide is essentially close to the phenomena of coloration of crystals (for example, rock salt), occurring under the action of ultraviolet and X-rays. The result obtained by T. P. Kravets and M. V. Savost’yanova, independently also found by R. Pohl in Göttingen, became the beginning of a series of works on the phenomena occurring in colored crystals and on the theory of the photographic image.

These works were then continued at the Physical Institute for about 10 years (M. V. Savost’yanova, S. A. Artsybyshev, and others).

In the summer of 1932, during an itinerant session of the Academy in Siberia, the author of this sketch, shortly before then elected a full member of the Academy, received a proposal from Academician V. L. Komarov, then vice-president, to take upon himself the direction of the Physical Division of the Institute. V. L. Komarov outlined the difficult situation that had arisen and considered it necessary to create a strong and many-sided Physical Institute within the Academy. From the end of 1932 the reorganization of the Physical Division of the Institute began. In essence, under the common signboard of the Physico-Mathematical Institute, already from the beginning of 1933 there existed two separate Institutes: the Physical and the Mathematical. We, i.e. Academician I. M. Vinogradov and I, were duumvirs, united only by a common, very good library.

In 1933 the main directions of work of the reorganized Physical Institute became clear. They were:

1) investigation of the properties of neutrons (which had been discovered shortly before), 2) luminescence of liquids under the action of radioactive radiations, 3) investigation of colored crystals, 4) a series of works on the study of the microstructure of liquids (by the method of Brownian motion, the Kerr phenomenon, polarization of fluorescence, dispersion of ultrasound), 5) investigation of electrical breakdown in gases, 6) electronographic and X-ray investigation of catalysts. The principal executors of this large program were L. V. Mysovskii, postgraduate student N. A. Dobrotin, I. M. Frank, postgraduate student P. A. Cherenkov, M. V. Savost’yanova, L. V. Groshev, M. S. Eigenson, S. A. Artsybyshev, A. D. Gol’dgammer, V. A. Ioffe, postgraduate student A. N. Sevchenko, B. G. Shpakovskii, B. M. Vul, I. M. Gol’dman, P. D. Dankov, A. A. Kochetkov. The replenishment of equipment began; various ...

seminars; the Institute was rapidly entering a new, considerably more active and effective phase of its existence.

Within the old walls of the main building of the Academy, before the move to Moscow, in 1933 and 1934 P. A. Cherenkov discovered and studied a new optical phenomenon, the nature of which was finally understood only in Moscow, chiefly thanks to the theoretical work of I. E. Tamm and I. M. Frank. N. A. Dobrotin, also in Leningrad, completed the first experimental “nuclear” work, concerned with the law of collision of neutrons and protons. New and interesting results from the theoretical and technical points of view were obtained in those two years by B. M. Vul and I. M. Goldman on the question of the dielectric strength of gases. S. A. Artsybyshev developed a new method for coloring crystals and carried out a series of investigations of the electrical and optical properties of these crystals. It proved possible by optical means to measure the diffusion of copper and gold ions in rock salt. Such were some of the experimental results obtained very soon in the transformed Institute. It had clearly passed the period of crisis discussed above.

The main building of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In its right wing the Physics Cabinet, then the Laboratory and the Institute, were housed from 1828 to 1934.

In the summer of 1934, by decree of the Government, the Institute, together with the Academy of Sciences, was transferred to Moscow, receiving there a building on 3rd Miusskaya. The mathematicians were finally separated from the Physico-Mathematical Institute, and the Institute received its present name: the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute. With the name of P. N. Lebedev, old academic physics was, as it were, linked with Moscow physics.

In Moscow, beginning in the autumn of 1934, an entirely new era began in the activity of the old academic laboratory. The structure of the Institute and its personnel changed substantially. At present it numbers about 200 staff members. Over the past 10 years the structure has undergone

only minor changes and has essentially been preserved to the present day. FIAN is divided into the following laboratories:

1) Laboratory of the Atomic Nucleus, headed by Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences D. V. Skobeltsyn. The laboratory staff includes: Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences V. I. Veksler, Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences I. M. Frank, Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences S. N. Vernov, Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences P. A. Cherenkov, Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences L. V. Groshev. The laboratory’s principal problem is the study of the nature of cosmic rays.

2) Laboratory of the Physics of Oscillations named after Academician L. I. Mandelstam, headed by Academician N. D. Papaleksi. The laboratory staff includes: Academician B. A. Vvedensky,

Building of the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow (3rd Miusskaya, 3).

Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences S. M. Rytov, Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences P. A. Ryazin, Doctor of Technical Sciences E. Ya. Shchegolev, Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences A. A. Andronov, Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences G. S. Gorelik. The Laboratory’s principal problem is the study of the propagation of electromagnetic waves and problems of nonlinear oscillations.

3) Laboratory of Physical Optics, headed by Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences G. S. Landsberg. The main direction of the Laboratory is the application of combination scattering of light and other methods to molecular analysis and to the study of the structure of liquids and crystals.

4) Laboratory of Luminescence, headed by Academician S. I. Vavilov. The Laboratory includes: Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences V. L. Levshin, Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences V. V. Antonov-Romanovsky, Doctor of Chemical Sciences M. A. Konstantinova, Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences L. A. Tumerman. The principal direction of the laboratory is the study of the nature and applications of crystalline phosphors.

5) Laboratory of Spectral Analysis, headed by Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences S. L. Mandelstam. The main direction of the Laboratory is the development of the theory of spectral-analytical methods and the study of sources of spectral analysis.

6) Laboratory of Dielectric Physics, headed by Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences B. M. Vul. The main direction of the Laboratory is the physical study of the dielectric properties and electrical breakdown of various materials.

Academician Leonid Isaakovich Mandelstam (1879–1944).

7) Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, headed by Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences I. E. Tamm. The laboratory includes: Academician V. A. Fock, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences V. L. Ginzburg, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences K. V. Nikolsky, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences [[unclear: continuation cut off at bottom of page]]

Doctor of Sciences E. L. Feinberg, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences M. A. Markov, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR D. I. Blokhintsev. The Laboratory’s principal field is the theory of the atomic nucleus, the theory of cosmic rays, and other problems of theoretical physics.

8) The Laboratory of Acoustics, headed by Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences N. N. Andreev. The Laboratory includes: Doctor of Technical Sciences Yu. M. Sukharevsky, Doctor of Technical Sciences L. D. Rozenberg. The Laboratory’s principal field is problems of hydroacoustics.

In the prewar years the Laboratory of Acoustics carried out extensive work on architectural acoustics in close cooperation with the construction of the Palace of Soviets. With funds from the Academy of Sciences and the Directorate for the construction of the Palace of Soviets, on the Kaluga Highway, on the site allotted by the Academy to the Physical Institute for the future large building of the Institute, a special building was constructed in 1941 for the Acoustic Laboratory, containing a number of specialized rooms (reverberation chambers). At present the Acoustic Laboratory is located in this building and to a considerable extent has a separate establishment. At the initiative of the head of the Laboratory, N. N. Andreev, the Institute raised the question of separating the Acoustic Laboratory into an independent institution within the Physico-Mathematical Division of the Academy.

From 1934 to 1937 the Institute included the Laboratory of Surface Phenomena, headed by Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences P. A. Rehbinder. In view of the fact that the work of this very important and interesting Laboratory was for the most part physico-chemical in character, the Presidium of the Academy resolved to transfer this Laboratory to the Colloid-Electrochemical Institute.

The Institute carried out extensive expeditionary work. While still in Leningrad, the Lebedev Physical Institute became the organizing center of the Elbrus complex expeditions, in which it took direct part in measurements of cosmic rays and in certain atmospheric-optical observations. Up to and including 1940, the Lebedev Physical Institute continued to participate in the Elbrus expeditions.

In 1944, an independent expedition of the Lebedev Physical Institute to the Pamirs on questions of cosmic rays was organized; it was conducted very productively despite the difficult conditions of wartime. The Institute also equipped expeditions to the Black and Caspian Seas on certain questions of the propagation of radio waves and of acoustics.

The invasion of the Hitlerite troops into the territory of the USSR on June 21, 1941, disrupted the normal development of the Institute. At the end of July 1941 the Institute was evacuated to the city of Kazan, where it was housed in the premises of the physical practicum of Kazan State University. The Institute remained there for more than two years, until the autumn of 1943.

Those Kazan years were undoubtedly difficult, both in production and in everyday life. But the general patriotic upsurge will never be forgotten, which, despite privations, directed everyone toward a single cause: aid to the front.

Without any compulsion, the laboratories changed the subjects of their work so that they could help the Red Army, the war industry, and hospitals. The result was quite real and indisputable. The Institute helped to establish in Kazan the production of luminous compounds with a permanent action. At the Institute they learned how to prepare ceramic masses for the insulation of radio capacitors and transferred this work to production,

Building of Kazan State University according to a lithograph from the 1830s. The Physical Institute was evacuated to this building during the Great Patriotic War, staying there from the end of July 1941 until the autumn of 1943.

which now turns them out by the tens of thousands per month; for Kazan and other factories, the staff of the Atomic Nucleus Laboratory produced new defectoscopic instruments; hospitals received from FIAN a new X-ray stereo apparatus; the Institute’s acousticians worked at the front, carrying out important military assignments; the theoreticians, through their calculations, helped in the struggle against magnetic and acoustic mines, while the luminescence specialists found new effective ways of applying luminescence for military tasks, combining physical novelty with military importance. Spectral analysis from the Institute, in the form of methods passed on to factory laboratory workers and of new instruments, spread rapidly through the factories. Specialists in vibrations gave the navy and aviation new methods.

The library of the Physical Institute was the only academic library that was almost completely evacuated and open for use by all academic institutions. It brought the Academy in Kazan a benefit that is difficult to overestimate.

During the Institute’s absence from Moscow, production institutions carrying out important defense work were housed in its building. At present the Institute is gradually restoring its normal life, sharply disrupted by the war and the evacuation.

It was an exceptionally grievous event for the Institute when, on November 27, 1944, Academician L. I. Mandelstam died—the inspirer and leader of many of the Institute’s works in the laboratories of oscillations and physical optics. In L. I. Mandelstam, Soviet physics lost one of its most remarkable, profound, and subtle representatives.

First page of Academician L. I. Mandelstam’s report “The Interferometric Method for Investigating the Propagation of Electromagnetic Waves,” 1938.

The loss of Leonid Isaakovich for the Institute is irreparable.

In this brief essay there is no possibility of characterizing the work of the Institute over the last 12 years. From 1917 to 1933 the Institute published in all about 15 papers (if mathematical and seismological papers are excluded); during the last 12 years, however, the number of published physics papers approaches a thousand! We shall confine ourselves to listing some (very few) works of this period which, at least at present, seem the most significant.

1. Interference method for investigating the propagation of electromagnetic waves (L. I. Mandelstam and N. D. Papaleksi).
2. Propagation of radio waves along the earth’s surface (L. I. Mandelstam, N. D. Papaleksi, P. A. Ryazin, E. L. Feinberg, V. V. Migulin).
3. Visible radiation of electrons moving in a medium with superluminal velocity (P. A. Cherenkov, I. E. Tamm, I. M. Frank, S. I. Vavilov, V. L. Ginzburg).
4. Investigation of the process of pair formation: electron and positron, using a Wilson chamber (L. V. Groshev, I. M. Frank).
5. Investigation of secondary mesons by the method of proportional counters (V. I. Veksler, N. A. Dobrotin).
6. Investigations of cosmic radiation by the method of balloon-sondes and substratostats (S. N. Vernov).
7. Attenuation of ultrasonic waves in viscous liquids (L. I. Mandelstam, G. S. Landsberg, M. A. Leontovich, P. A. Bazhulin).
8. The nature of the radiation of the condensed spark (S. L. Mandelstam).
9. Theory of the attenuation of phosphorescence (V. L. Levshin, V. V. Antonov-Romanovskii, D. I. Blokhintsev).
10. Luminescent analysis of ozone (M. A. Konstantinova).
11. Fluorometric studies of the laws of fading of dye solutions (L. A. Tumerman).
12. Investigation of the electrical breakdown of gases (B. M. Vul and I. M. Gol’dman).
13. New dielectrics with large values of the dielectric constant (B. M. Vul and I. M. Gol’dman).
14. Investigations in architectural acoustics (N. N. Andreev, S. N. Rzhevkin, Yu. M. Sukharevskii).
15. Determination of diffusion coefficients in colored crystals (S. A. Artsybyshev).

For work on the propagation of radio waves, Academicians L. I. Mandelstam and N. D. Papaleksi were awarded the Stalin Prize, first class. For investigations in the field of luminescence and visual quantum fluctuations, Academician S. I. Vavilov was awarded the Stalin Prize, second class. For work on spectral analysis, the Stalin Prize, second class, was received by Corresponding Member

Academy of Sciences of the USSR G. S. Landsberg. The Stalin Prize, third class, was awarded to S. A. Fridman for work on luminescent compositions*).

The Institute has become one of the important centers for the training of personnel. At present it has 30 graduate students. Much has been done by the Institute in compiling textbooks for higher education. This sphere of the Institute’s activity brings it especially close to the academic physics of preceding generations, especially of the eighteenth century.

With this we conclude our brief historical sketch. The Academy of Sciences, and together with it the Physics Institute, mark the 220th anniversary of their existence in the great historic days of victory over a once terrible enemy. These days in many respects determine the future development of all mankind. Together with the entire Soviet people, we hope to become participants in a new, as yet unseen, rise of socialist construction and the cultural flourishing of our Motherland. Just as in the years of war, so in the years of peace physicists are ready to apply their knowledge, skill, and patriotism for the good of their native people and of all mankind.

LITERARY SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF THE PHYSICS INSTITUTE OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

1. Materials for the History of the Academy of Sciences, 10 volumes.
2. P. Pekarsky, History of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Petersburg. Volume one, 1870, and volume two, 1873.
3. M. I. Sukhomlinov, History of the Russian Academy, 10 issues.
4. Minutes of the Meetings of the Conference of the Imperial Academy of Sciences from 1725 to 1803, 4 volumes (1897–1911).
5. Materials for the History of Academic Institutions (1889–1914). Part one. 1917.
6. Materials for a Biographical Dictionary of Full Members of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 2 parts, 1915 and 1917.
7. B. L. Modzalevsky, List of Members of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1725–1907. St. Petersburg, 1908.
8. The Physico-Mathematical Institute. Leningrad, 1925 (brochure).
9. S. I. Vavilov. The P. N. Lebedev Physics Institute (Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR), 1937, No. 10/11, p. 37.
10. Collection Academician V. V. Petrov, edited by S. I. Vavilov. Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences, 1940.

*) At present a number of names should be added to this list. By decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR of January 26, Stalin Prizes, first class, were awarded to: Academician S. I. Vavilov, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR I. E. Tamm, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences I. M. Frank, and Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences P. A. Cherenkov for the discovery and study of the radiation of electrons moving with a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in a given medium; and to Academician V. A. Fock for research on the theory of radio-wave propagation.

1. Bulletin de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg, Vol. XIII, No. 5, p. 481 (1900). Also Astrophysical Journal, Vol. XIII, p. 15 (1901). ↩↩