G.-V. RICHMAN

FROM THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS

ON THE 200th ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF ACADEMICIAN G.-W. RICHMANN

T. P. Kravets and M. I. Radovskii

“... Mr. Richmann died a beautiful death, fulfilling the duty of his profession. His memory will never be silent.”

(M. Lomonosov, Works, vol. VIII, p. 7)

1

Two hundred years ago, on July 26 (old style), 1753, while making observations on atmospheric electricity, Academician G.-W. Richmann was killed, struck by lightning. One of the remarkable pages in the history of Russian science and a considerable part of the work of M. V. Lomonosov are connected with his name.

Unlike many other Petersburg academicians of that time, Georg-Wilhelm Richmann was born in Russia, where he lived all his life, with the exception of several years spent in Halle and Jena, where he studied at the universities there. By origin he was an Estonian, or, as he wrote, “by nature a Livonian.” Richmann was born on July 11, 1711, in Pernau (Pärnu); he received his primary and secondary education at the Reval gymnasium.

From his earliest years Richmann was left to himself; he was born after the death of his father, who had died during the plague epidemic at the end of 1710. Because of material insecurity Richmann was forced to leave the university and accept the position offered to him as tutor in the house of the well-known Russian dignitary, Count A. I. Osterman.

But Richmann did not remain long in Osterman’s house; he succeeded in being admitted as a student to the Academy of Sciences.

While studying at the universities in Halle and Jena, Richmann showed a special interest in the physical and mathematical sciences, and at the Academy he was “assigned to the physical class.” In an order of the Academy of Sciences dated October 13, 1735, its president, ...

or, as it was then called, the chief commander I. A. Korff, granting Richmann’s request, admitted him as a student to the Academy, enrolling him in the physical class; the student was allotted one hundred and fifty rubles a year, with lodging, heating, lighting, and other kinds of service enjoyed by the Academy’s staff.

Richmann stood out markedly among his contemporaries and unusually quickly attained a prominent scholarly position in the Academy of Sciences. Less than five years later, on March 12, 1740, he submitted to the Academy of Sciences a petition to enroll him as an adjunct (the first of the academic ranks). His petition was soon granted. In the order for the Academy we read: “the aforementioned Richmann is to be an adjunct in those classes, and his salary is to be paid from this year 740, from the 12th day of March, at three hundred and sixty rubles per year, including) therein lodging, firewood, and candles, and a contract is to be drawn up with the said Richmann, and an ukase is to be sent regarding this expense*)”.

From Richmann’s autobiography it is clear that already from the beginning of his appointment to the Academy he worked in the physical laboratory (“department”), helping his supervisor, Academician G. V. Kraft (1701–1754), and, as Richmann writes, “under his guidance and advice I continued the study of physics.”

The field of physics in the Academy of Sciences had, from the moment of its founding, developed at a very high level. Suffice it to say that Kraft’s predecessor in this chair was L. Euler.

Kraft received the chair of physics in 1733, that is, two years before Richmann entered the Academy. Thus, in helping his supervisor in arranging the cabinet, the student Richmann underwent a thorough schooling. Richmann relates in the same autobiography that, as a student, he petitioned Korff for permission “to attend the conference***) and to listen to what the professors read.”

Richmann’s literary activity also began in his student years. Richmann recounts: “I published some Notes (in the Saint Petersburg Gazette): in 1738 on phosphorus; in 1739—on waters from mineral and healing springs; on amber and on the remarkable changes to which the surface of our earth has gradually been subject; in 1740—on objects made from sea shells, sea snails, oyster shells, and bones of sea fish; also on domestic cannons, in ancient times used before the invention of gunpowder.”

But Richmann devoted his main attention to scientific investigations. The young researcher did not immediately find the subject on which he subsequently—

) Not counting. (Author’s note.)
) The accounting office. (Author’s note.)
) The general assembly of academicians. (Author’s note.)

...he worked throughout his entire life. In order that his “diligence might be known,” Richmann undertook works in fields of knowledge far removed from one another. But they proceeded successfully when he turned to the study of questions of natural science. The most fruitful were his works in the field of heat. While still a student, Richmann relates, he submitted to the Academy a dissertation in Latin, in which he “strove to explain in what manner the expiration of vapors occurs.” The subject of Richmann’s investigations during his student years was also the properties of rarefied gases. The result of these investigations was the proposal of “such a machine, by means of which water can be raised upward.”

Richmann’s successful scientific and literary activity resulted in the official recognition of his merits. Less than a year later he was elected “second professor” in the chair of physics.

Richmann did not long remain in a secondary role in the chair of physics. In 1743 Academician Krafft submitted his resignation. The Governing Senate asked the Academy concerning his replacement. The reply, signed by all the academicians, was to the effect that the second, or, as he was also called, extraordinary professor of physics, was honorably fulfilling his duties, and that if Krafft persisted in his desire to leave the Academy, the chair of physics would not remain without a head.

Richmann’s efforts in the training of Russian scholars were very successful. The first among the academicians to educate pupils who later showed themselves to be independent investigators was L. Euler. But these were individuals who came to him in Berlin, where he lived for a number of years as a member of the Petersburg Academy. The history of the academic university has not yet been written, but materials relating to this curious page of our country’s cultural past convincingly testify that Richmann was in the front rank of the group of academicians headed by Lomonosov, to whom the country owed the creation of a body of Russian scholars significant for the eighteenth century.

By virtue of the situation that arose in the Academy, Richmann had to teach not only the discipline he headed, but also a course in higher mathematics. It so happened that the Academy, which at first had among its members the best mathematicians in the world—among them such men as N. and D. Bernoulli and L. Euler—over the following ten to fifteen years was left without any representatives of this discipline at all. And since there was no one at the Academy to teach mathematics, Richmann had to take it upon himself.

But Richmann’s teaching of mathematics had not only auxiliary significance. The mathematics students trained in the 1740s from among the academic students were Richmann’s pupils; among them were S. K. Kotelnikov (1723–1806) (later an academician) and the promising adjunct M. Sofronov (1729–1761), tragi-

...tragically perished in the flowering of his talents. Kotelnikov was not only a listener to Richmann’s lectures, but, one may say, his postgraduate student.

The training of cadres of native specialists assumed a regular and systematic character only when Lomonosov succeeded in having this matter placed in his hands. Lomonosov was proud that the academic university under his direction had, in four years, given the country twenty graduates with completed higher education. Until that time, so long as the gymnasium and the university had been under Schumacher’s authority, “almost no care was taken for the education of Russian youth.”*) That is why, Lomonosov points out, “under one**) rule by Schumacher, in thirty years there emerged not a single person.”***)

In this struggle Lomonosov was not alone. The best forces of the Academy were on his side. True, with some academicians who did not show consistency to the end he later parted ways, and they turned out to be among his ill-wishers. But with Richmann Lomonosov preserved “friendship and concord” to the last day, having in him a faithful comrade-in-arms in the struggle for the flourishing of native science.

2

A scientist is flesh of the flesh of the epoch contemporary to him, and to judge his achievements apart from that epoch means falling into an impermissible historical error. What tasks of his time did Richmann meet, and what had he managed to do for the solution of these tasks by the moment of his death, when he was only 42 years old?

The physicists of the eighteenth century occupied themselves much with heat and assiduously accumulated experimental material in this field. One must not be deceived by the seeming ease of these investigations: they are easy only from the standpoint of the modern technique of physical experiment. But at that time this technique was such: until shortly before then, no precise heat measurements had existed at all—the thermometer itself had been brought to the state in which it began to deserve the name of a measuring instrument only about 20 years before Richmann’s work. Fahrenheit labored more than anyone else for this purpose; his thermometers began to give mutually consistent readings (1709–1724). The Réaumur scale appeared in 1730, and the Celsius scale in 1742; in the latter the boiling point was designated as zero, and the freezing point

*) M. V. Lomonosov, A Brief History of Conduct in the Academic Chancellery, in the book Materials for Lomonosov’s Biography, collected by Bilyarskii, St. Petersburg, 1865, p. 052.

**) Sole rule over all academic affairs. (Author’s note.)

***) M. V. Lomonosov, cited work, p. 079.

toward water—by the number 100; let us recall that Lomonosov had his own two scales, one of which has still not been deciphered by us*). In short, almost every scientist had to prepare his own measuring instrument. Rikhman also intervenes in this matter, arriving at the idea, now seeming quite elementary, of the necessity of calibrating the capillary of a thermometer. He develops for the first time the method of such calibration. Of course, we have long since forgotten that we owe this method to Rikhman.

What is heat?—At that time there exist only conjectures on this question; there are as yet no factual data about heat; if temperatures are measured, there are no methods for measuring the quantity of heat. There is, apparently, no need to determine it (heat engineering does not yet exist), and there are no attempts to establish a unit of the quantity of heat. The first, elementary step toward the development of calorimetry is made by Rikhman in his works of 1747 and 1748**). He mixes different quantities of one and the same liquid at different temperatures and proves that the temperature of the mixture is determined by the “rule of mixture,” known under this name in arithmetic:

\[ t=\frac{m_1t_1+m_2t_2}{m_1+m_2}. \]

This is the first calorimetric determination in our science. Rikhman did not extend his experiments to the mixing of bodies of different composition—this was done 30 years after him by Wilcke (in Sweden) and by Joseph Black (in Scotland). They discovered (by the same method of mixing) the first—the existence of specific heat capacity, and the second—latent heat of the melting of ice. Thus Rikhman, by his experiments, gave a prototype of the calorimetric method of mixtures, which has survived to our day, and with some right may be called a precursor of scientific calorimetry.

If technology did not yet present its demands to scientists in the field of heat, then these scientists themselves sought applications of their research in agriculture and directed their efforts toward the creation of the scientific foundations of meteorology. Let us listen to what Rikhman himself says on this question***): “For what is more worthy of human reasoning than to seek such a method by which to know the weather accurately in advance, and by it to predict

*) M. V. Lomonosov, Collected Works, vol. 3, pp. 401—405 and 565.
**) G. Rikhman, Reflections on the quantity of heat which must arise when liquids are mixed, heated to a known degree, Novi Com., vol. I, p. 152.
***) Ceremonial speech at the meeting of the Academy, November 26, 1749.

happy or unhappy adventures, such as, for example, fertility?”*).

In this direction, Richmann investigated in particular the phenomena of evaporation, and his experiments deserve full attention and respect as the first formulation of the question. But, of course, they were made at a different level of knowledge than the experiments of the nineteenth century; let us recall that even the existence of the state of vapor saturation and the existence of the latent heat of evaporation were unknown; the cause of the vertical temperature gradient was also unclear.**) But as the first numerical and orienting material, Richmann’s data should be remembered by all meteorologists, agricultural workers, foresters, and so on.

Richmann was also the first to begin experimental investigations on the question of the cooling of bodies; before him we know only Newton’s theory. Once again, Richmann began to deal with these questions a hundred years earlier than sufficient scientific prerequisites had been created for their proper solution: Kirchhoff’s laws, the Stefan–Boltzmann rule, the concept of an absolutely black body, and so forth. The theory of thermal conductivity was also created only in 1805–1811 and later by Jean-Baptiste Fourier. But who can deny the importance of the experimental problem first posed by Richmann?

Richmann’s works on electricity are of great significance. The electricity of that time was not the electricity of our epoch, by means of which—on a previously unseen scale—energy is transmitted over thousands of kilometers, divided among consumers from a modest little lamp to a huge factory, and converted into all other forms—mechanical, thermal, chemical, and so on. At that time it was still pure electrostatics, poorly understood even by outstanding scientists, and perceived by laymen now as a miracle, now as a trick. The spark (or fire!) drawn from an insulated and charged person, spectators were ready to interpret as something mystical: this person, who by touching a finger ignites alcohol, possesses some supernatural power, etc. And at this time Richmann***), as

*) Let us recall that Richmann’s famous contemporary, M. V. Lomonosov, also showed special interest in “phenomena of the air” and, in particular, in questions of the vertical circulation of the atmosphere; he was still occupied with the latter in connection with the natural motion of air in mines (see vol. I of the Complete Collection of his Works, 1951, and also in vol. III the “Discourse on Atmospheric Phenomena...” of 1753 with the notes thereto).

) The first correct explanation of this phenomenon was given by Sadi Carnot in his brilliant brochure On the Motive Power of Fire (1828), and it was calculated, on the basis of the idea of the completely adiabatic character of the process in ascending air currents, by Clausius (in the 1860s).

***) His experiments also “provided entertainment” at the court of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. In showing these experiments, he made them still more effective: he drew “fire” from water and even from ice (of course, moist ice).

a true scientist, insists that knowledge becomes exact only when a phenomenon is measured and expressed by a number—when a method for such measurement has been developed. He is the first in the world to construct an instrument for “measuring the electrical state.” What exactly is measured thereby was not clear at the time: there was as yet no concept of quantity of electricity, and the concept of tension or potential remained obscure even a hundred years later (see Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity, vol. I, p. 734, and the passages of the book indicated there). Rikhman’s instrument (he calls it an “indicator of electricity”) consists of an iron ruler; near it, opposite its narrow edge, hangs a linen thread, weighing about 33 mg and 45 cm long. Below there is arranged a wooden divided quadrant, with its center at the point from which the thread is suspended; thus one degree of deflection of the thread on the quadrant corresponds to an arc about 8 mm long. It is not difficult to calculate (taking the thread as rigid) that for such a deflection a force of 0.6 mg must be applied. The instrument, of course, measures the potential difference between the ruler and the walls of the room*); when the dimensions of the instrument are large, the distances to the walls already differ quite appreciably from infinity; owing to the absence of a case, it would be difficult to say anything more definite about its sensitivity. But there is no doubt that this is the first electrometer, and the further development of electrometry must be counted from Rikhman.

Rikhman not only constructed his instrument—he carried out with its aid a whole series of quantitative investigations. In a certain part of them, concerning atmospheric electricity, M. V. Lomonosov took part; these are the works of Rikhman that led to his tragic death. More on this below. Here, however, let us note some other investigations by Rikhman with the “indicator.”

From the “solid angles” of the ruler (as from any point) luminous sparks emerge. This is a defect of the instrument, which poorly retains charge. Rikhman combats this by covering the protruding corners with wax; we would now say: “with a substance of high dielectric strength.” Around charged bodies there arises “a certain extremely subtle excited matter.” We would agree: yes, this is a field. The field, in Rikhman’s opinion, differs depending on the shape of the charged body (he also performs certain experiments to prove this). “Here,” he writes, “a wide field opens for lovers of stereometry.”

Further he investigates the “time during which the thread of the indicator descended through a definite arc,” varying the insulation of the ruler. He notes the necessity, for experiments, of a dry atmosphere.

Moistening the “support of the electrified mass” accelerates the loss of electricity; a point acts in an accelerating manner not only

*) And, presumably, with the quadrant.

then when it is connected with the body, but also when it is brought near to it. An influence is observed on the decrease of the electricity of a capacitance attached to the body. The author also proposes to investigate the “law of the diminution of electricity.”

Of course, the study of “natural” (i.e., atmospheric) electricity is of particular interest. The author cites Gray (1730) and Winkler (1746), who were the first to express the idea of the identity of electrical and thunderstorm phenomena, as well as Caesar, Livy, and Seneca (“St. Elmo’s fires”). The “wisest Franklin” is also mentioned. Experiments on natural electricity are dangerous, but “in our time physicists are afforded the opportunity to show a certain courage and daring in a risky undertaking”—tragic foresight! The indicator of natural electricity retains its deflection even in the case when it is “frequently touched.” The most honorable Mr. Lomonosov observed strong electrical phenomena “without any thunder and lightning”—i.e., a constant electrostatic field of the earth was established, sometimes very strong even without a thunderstorm*).

Richmann proposed another instrument for the “measurement of electricity” as well: he created the prototype of an “absolute electrometer,” i.e., a condenser, one plate of which (the lower, charged one) is fixed immovably, while the other is suspended from the arm of a balance**). The author, evidently, is guided by the idea that the interaction of two electrical masses depends on their mutual distance. Of course, he gives no more exact theory of the instrument, and the quantitative law of interaction remained unknown to him—this law was found by Coulomb 40 years after Richmann, and a precise balance electrometer was developed by W. Thomson 100 years after him***).

3

On the morning of July 26 (August 6), 1753, a regular meeting of the academicians took place at the Petersburg Academy of Sciences. The weather was fine, but at noon a cloud began to move in from the north. M. V. Lomonosov and G. V. Richmann, who were present at the meeting, immediately hurried home, where each of them had a laboratory equipped and where they systematically carried out experiments and observations on atmospheric electricity. On the way Richmann invited to his place the academic engraver—the “engraving master”—Sokolov, wishing to show him experiments with “natural” electricity for

*) On the indicator of electricity, Novi Comm. IV, pp. 301–340.

**) New data on the excitation of electricity in bodies (Comm. XIV, pp. 299 (1744–1746)).

***) As far as we remember, it was last used, in an original modification, by our compatriot A. A. Eikhenvald in his classic studies of the magnetic action of convective currents.

...so that they would be reflected in the engraving of the vignette for the speeches at the forthcoming assembly.

The approaching thunderstorm was still far away, so that the investigators managed to get home before the “thunder machine” could detect the “electric force.” But as soon as Richmann and Lomonosov began their observations, lightning flashed, a deafening peal of thunder was heard, and the former was struck dead.

The circumstances of this tragic death are recounted in detail by documents drawn up on that same day and on the following day after Richmann’s death. Here the first place must be given to Lomonosov’s famous letter to I. I. Shuvalov; next—the medical examination of Richmann’s corpse, drawn up by Academician H. G. Kratzenstein (1723–1795) and sent as an official report to the president of the Academy of Sciences, K. G. Razumovsky.

Lomonosov’s letter to Shuvalov was written on July 26, the day of the catastrophe, under the immediate impression of the calamity. Lomonosov set about this letter scarcely having recovered after the instantaneous death of his friend. The author was guided by concern for the fate of Richmann’s family, left in a hopeless situation, and by fear “that this incident might not be interpreted against the advancement of the sciences.”*

The shock experienced by Lomonosov is attested by the following lines: “That I am now writing to Your Excellency—he emphasized—consider it a miracle, for dead men do not write; I do not yet know, or at least I doubt, whether I am alive or dead.”** Indeed, he, like Richmann, was carrying out experiments during a thunderstorm and was exposed to the same mortal danger: “I see that Mr. Professor Richmann was killed by thunder in exactly the same circumstances in which I was at that very time.”

Lomonosov then reports in the letter the following details. At one o’clock in the afternoon a thundercloud was approaching from the north; the thunder that broke out was “especially strong,” but there was no rain. When Lomonosov began his observations, no charges in the atmosphere were detected on the electrometer that he and Richmann had long been using in their experiments. It was noon, and while the meal was being served he stepped away from the “thunder machine” and awaited “deliberate electric sparks from the wire.” At his invitation his household came and, after him, repeated the experiments of drawing electric sparks, in order to note what color they were (on this question Lomonosov differed with Richmann). “And both I and they constantly touched the wire and the suspended rod, because

*) Works of M. V. Lomonosov: Edition of the Academy of Sciences, vol. VIII, edited by Academician S. I. Vavilov, 1948, p. 131.
**) Ibid., p. 129.

I wanted to have witnesses of different colors of fire, about which the late Professor Richmann argued with me*).

Thunder crashed when Lomonosov was conducting the experiment; the sparks crackled so strongly that those who had gathered ran out. Lomonosov’s wife begged him to stop the experiments, but he, forgetting everything, stayed relentlessly by the instrument until the latter showed that “the electrical force had almost ceased.”

Lomonosov had not managed to sit down at the dinner table when Richmann’s breathless servant came running in. The servant’s face was contorted with fear, and with difficulty he could only utter: “The professor has been killed by thunder.” Lomonosov immediately, “in the greatest possible passion,” ran to his friend and found a terrible scene. Richmann lay lifeless, surrounded by his grieving household, as pale, Lomonosov writes, as the deceased himself.

The horror that seized the author of the letter is depicted by him in the following lines: “Both my own death, which had recently been near, and his pale body, and our former concord and friendship with him, and the weeping of his wife, children, and household were so affecting that I could give no word or answer to the great multitude of people who had gathered, looking at that face with which an hour before I had sat in the Conference and discussed our future public act.”

Meanwhile, Academician H. G. Kratzenstein (a physician by training) arrived from the Academy and described in detail in his report the attempts to bring Richmann back to life. Lomonosov also recounts them: “We tried to renew the movement of the blood in him, because he was still warm; however, the head was injured, and there is no more hope.” The blow struck the head—on the forehead there remained, as Lomonosov relates, a spot of reddish-cherry color. Further he reports that the “thundering electrical force” passed out of the legs into the floor. The shoe on one foot was torn, but not burned.

Let us also examine the report of Academician Kratzenstein, which is a protocol record of everything he saw and of what Sokolov told him.

From it the following course of events emerges. The investigator was in such a hurry to take advantage of the unexpected opportunity to make observations that he did not change his clothes, but, merely taking off his wig, immediately “went to the electrical machine, where he ran a wire with blood in order to observe by it the electrical force of the remaining thunder.” Soon lightning flashed and deafening peals of thunder resounded. Sokolov later recalled that, standing a little way from Richmann, he noticed that “a light-white fiery ball fell upon his forehead,” and Richmann “without any sound” fell backward onto a chest standing there. The stunned Sokolov also fell, and when he came to, he saw that the room was filled with thick smoke, which obscured Richmann’s face.

*) Ibid., p. 130.

Rikhman’s wife ran into the room and saw her husband unconscious. She tried to bring him to his senses with household remedies—“Hungarian vodka,” but, seeing that nothing helped, sent for Kratzenstein, who immediately arrived at the scene of the accident. Here is what he related: “When I came there with great haste, I found him lying on the sofa; I at once felt his pulse, but there was no longer any beating; then I let blood from his arm with a lancet, but only one drop of it came out; I blew into his mouth, as is usually done with those who have suffocated, several times, holding his nostrils shut, in order thereby to set the blood in motion again, but all was in vain; upon examination I found that on his forehead, on the left side of the temple, there was a blood-red spot the size of a ruble coin; the shoe on his left foot was torn in two places above the little toe, and around the torn place small white specks were visible; on the black silk stocking the same specks were visible, but the stocking was not burned; when the stocking was removed, beneath the pierced place a blood-red, indeed crimson, spot was found, while the heel was bluish; on the upper part of the body, on the chest and under the ribs on the left side, crimson spots of the same size as on the forehead were visible; by the kitchen doors a splinter*) two feet long had been knocked off, which had been broken into small pieces. Another splinter lay on the sixth step of the staircase. The block by the doors in the entryway had been split from top to bottom, but the door itself withstood it**).

Rikhman’s being struck by lightning evoked a response in Russian society and far beyond the country’s borders. However, in certain circles the unfortunate accident with the scholar produced precisely the reaction that Lomonosov had so feared. The latter pointed out that Rikhman’s death—no matter how obscurantists might try to prove that he had paid with his life for a daring intrusion into the “realm of God”—would not dampen the ardor of natural scientists to discover the mysteries of nature. On the contrary, Lomonosov affirms, the feat of the Russian academician will inspire researchers to further investigations, and reliable means will thereby be found that will make experiments with atmospheric electricity safe. “I do not think,” he said, “that by the sudden striking down of our Rikhman, minds testing nature will be frightened and will cease to investigate the laws of electrical force in the air; rather, I suppose that they will apply all their zeal to this with proper caution, so that it may be discovered how human health can be protected from those death-dealing blows.”

Rikhman’s death, Lomonosov insists, calls for further research, since the science of electricity, despite the achievements that were grandiose for that time, is still only at the initial stage of its development, and researchers are awaiting “an exceedingly rich reward for their labors, i.e., the revelation of such great natural wonders.”

*) That is, a splinter.

**) Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, p. 3.0.1, No. 707.

And here he immediately addresses the entire learned world: “A sanctuary lies open before our eyes; through the discovery of electrical actions in the air, and by the enticement of nature, we are summoned to its inner entrances! Shall we still stand at the threshold, and remain held back by the gainsaying of unfounded prejudice? By no means; but, on the contrary, insofar as it has been granted and permitted to us, we shall not cease to extend ourselves further, examining everything into which the intelligent eye can penetrate.”

The news of Richmann’s death spread throughout the world. It was reported by the press of Germany, France, England, and other countries. This news reached even the remote provinces of distant America. In North Carolina, in the then small town of Charleston, similar investigations were being conducted by the local physician J. Lining, who, among other things, was in correspondence with Franklin.

In the printed organ of the Royal Society, Phil. Transactions, there was published a letter from Lining dated January 14, 1754. From this letter it is clear how quickly (for that time) the news of the death of the Russian academician had reached America. It was learned there from a report in the London newspaper Dayly Advertiser, which reported the unfortunate event on September 27, 1753. The newspaper, of course, dealt with the sensation in its own way, and gave only the most general information. Researchers, however, were interested in detailed information about the circumstances of Richmann’s death. Lining, who had been asked from London about his experiments with atmospheric electricity, reports: “Since the time when I carried out these experiments last May (1753), I have had no opportunity to perform them further, and therefore, perhaps, escaped the sad fate that befell Professor Richmann*).”

The Society’s reply to Lining, announced at the meeting of the Society on July 4, 1754**), is remarkable in that the information contained in it was drawn from the “Discourse on Air Phenomena Arising from Electrical Forces,” received by the Royal Society, as well as by other foreign learned corporations, soon after the appearance in print of this notable work by Lomonosov.

A year later, in 1755, another article on this subject was published in the same journal. It begins with a high appraisal of Richmann’s works: “Everyone who has read the works of the Petersburg Academy, or even only the generally available articles, cannot but know with what zeal the late Prof. Richmann studied, among other branches of physics, electricity in general and the electricity of thunderclouds in particular***).”

Richmann’s principal work on electricity—the “Electrical Indicator”—saw the light of day four years after his death.

) Phil. Trans. XLVIII (1755), p. 757.
) Ibid., p. 765.
**) Ibid., XLIX, p. 61.

But the content of this work was known in scientific circles, and the author of the article named, speaking of the significance of Richman’s works on electricity, remarks: “It must be acknowledged, to his credit, that he made more discoveries on this subject than, I dare say, any other natural scientist; of this the learned world will be especially convinced after reading, when it appears in print, his treatise, which he intended to read on September 6, 1753, at a public meeting of the members of the Academy.”

The article also contains a description of the funeral. “He was buried on the 29th, and many people accompanied him. Those who had the pleasure of being more closely acquainted with him did not know to what they should pay greater tribute: to his knowledge and diligence, or to his benevolence and sincerity and, in general, to all his good qualities; and what they should mourn more: the loss suffered by the Academy, or that which his family must endure...”*)

And yet Richman did not escape the fate of many other scholars of tsarist Russia, where the achievements even of the most outstanding native researchers were consigned to oblivion. If Richman was remembered, it was only in connection with his tragic death. His most important contribution to the doctrine of electricity, his work in the field of electrical measurements, was appreciated only at the end of the nineteenth century, when Russian electrical engineers, seeking to comprehend the world-historical significance of the work of researchers who had worked in our country, took the first step in studying the history of electrical engineering in Russia, and Richman’s name was placed alongside the name of Lomonosov.

For both of them has been established the immortal glory of pioneers in the study of electricity in Russia. After them naturally follows a series of remarkable names of Russian electrical engineers: Petrov, Jacobi, Lenz, Yablochkov.

) Phil. Trans.* XLIX, pp. 68–69.