Academician P. P. Lazarev on the Principles of Organizing a Museum of the History of Natural Science and Technology

(Based on Archival Materials)

G. A. Mendelevich

The outstanding Soviet physicist, Academician Pyotr Petrovich Lazarev, throughout all his activity showed a deep interest in the study of the history of science.

In addition to the widely known “Historical Sketch of the Development of the Exact Sciences in Russia over the Course of 200 Years”*, written on the instructions of the Academy of Sciences, he also wrote brief biographies, presented in a lively and popular form, of remarkable Russian scientists: A. G. Stoletov, N. A. Umov, P. N. Lebedev, and B. B. Golitsyn.

Without separating the history of the development of Russian science from that of foreign science, P. P. Lazarev demonstrated the priority of Russian scientists in a number of the most important discoveries.

Lazarev devoted a number of articles to the history of the organization of scientific-research physical institutions in Russia: the Lebedev Laboratory at Shanyavsky University, the Physics Institute in Moscow, and the Institute of Physics and Biophysics. The design of the Physics Institute was drawn up by P. N. Lebedev together with P. P. Lazarev. After P. N. Lebedev’s death, supervision of the construction was entrusted to P. P. Lazarev, who was then elected the first director of the newly organized institute. At the institute Acad. Lazarev founded a small museum, in which original instruments of Russian scientists or photographs of them were to be kept. P. P. Lazarev gave the museum photographs of instruments and some manuscripts of P. N. Lebedev.

* Acad. P. P. Lazarev, Essays on the History of Russian Science, Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow–Leningrad, 1950, p. 9.

The initiative for creating an Institute of Physics and Biophysics on the basis of one of the laboratories of the Physics Institute likewise belongs to P. P. Lazarev. The scholar’s broad organizational and scientific activity followed organically from his views on the tasks of research work.

He believed that, alongside theoretical investigations, one of the principal tasks of scientific institutes is close ties “with practice,” assistance to developing socialist industry. He repeatedly expressed the idea that: “The work of scientists in laboratories and institutes in a country with a developed industry must be in the closest contact with the demands of practice, and therefore, in the construction that is unfolding in our country, scientific and scientific-technical institutes must play a major role”*).

As the author of outstanding works in the field of physics and of the related fields of biophysics and geophysics, P. P. was at the same time a brilliant popularizer of science and a tireless fighter for its propaganda among the people. He regularly gave reports and lectures, and often wrote popular-science articles. The document we are publishing contains statements by P. P. Lazarev on methods of acquainting the broad masses with contemporary achievements of science and technology.

In 1917, Academician Lazarev drew up a plan for creating a demonstration laboratory in physics and meteorology. The organization of the meteorological part was undertaken by Prof. P. I. Brounov**).

The document presented by us, dated April 1918, is kept in the State Archive of the October Revolution and Socialist Construction of Leningrad Oblast and was written by P. P. Lazarev in the form of a memorandum on the organization of a demonstration laboratory in physics and meteorology. The memorandum goes beyond the plan for creating a single laboratory and contains an exposition of the principles for creating a museum of the history of natural science and technology.

Apr. 1918

MEMORANDUM

by Academician P. P. LAZAREV

The development of science and a careful attitude toward the continuity of the work of researchers of various epochs and peoples sets one of the urgent tasks: the preservation of those original instruments and apparatuses which were used in their research by scientists who advanced—

*) Acad. P. P. Lazarev, Essays on the History of Russian Science, USSR Academy of Sciences Publishing House, Moscow–Leningrad, 1950, p. 105.

**) P. I. Brounov (1852–1927)—Soviet meteorologist, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, head of the Department of Meteorology of Leningrad State University, director of the State Institute of Experimental Agronomy, author of popular works on meteorology and physical geography.

science forward, and then a broad popularization of the ideas and facts of contemporary natural science by means of demonstrational museums for the visual education of the broad masses and for acquainting them with the latest achievements of experimental science. It would be desirable to have the first of these institutions at a major scientific center, such as the Academy of Sciences and the Moscow Scientific Institute should become; the second institution is most naturally to be connected with the Association of Positive Sciences*).

This institution, in our view, should represent what the Deutsches Museum**) in Munich represents, where all the latest discoveries of experimental science and technology are gathered in the form of visual schemes that enable every visitor to the Museum to perform the experiments himself...***).

In order to acquaint those unprepared with natural phenomena, this method of instruction is the most expedient; and the schemes and installations developed at the Deutsches Museum are so simple and uncomplicated that, even with a slight acquaintance with the subject, they make it possible to become sufficiently well acquainted with its experimental side. By way of illustration we shall give two examples. Suppose that a visitor to the Museum wishes to become acquainted with the properties of rarefied gases.

For this purpose he connects the instruments standing in a closed display case, with the aid of a rubber tube located on the outside, to tubes joined to the central vacuum reservoir, and in a few minutes he can perform all the experiments using the weight of a body in a vacuum, experiments with discharges in rarefied gases, and so on. Further, let us suppose that the visitor is interested in becoming acquainted with X-rays. He approaches a modern installation, presses a button, and sets in operation an apparatus located at such a distance from him that he can receive no harm from accidental sparks, etc. Placing a screen in front of himself and putting various objects behind it, the observer visually sees—

*) The Free Association for the Development and Dissemination of the Positive Sciences was organized in March 1917 by leading Russian scholars. The Association was headed by academicians V. A. Steklov and A. E. Fersman, and by professors S. P. Kostychev, A. A. Petrovsky, L. A. Chugaev, and others. A. M. Gorky took an active part in the work of the Association. The Association set itself the tasks of: broad popularization of scientific and technical knowledge and the organization of scientific-research institutes. It existed for about three years.

**) Deutsches Museum—the museum of natural science and technology in Munich, founded by the well-known German electrical engineer Prof. Oskar Miller in 1906.

The Museum’s Council included the leading German scientists: Planck, Röntgen, Diesel, and others.

The Museum possesses original documents of Ampère, Bunsen, Hertz, Liebig, Diesel, and other scientists.

***) Ellipsis in the original.

says that what he previously knew either from hearsay or from books.

In such a Museum it is highly desirable to reproduce the setting of physics and chemistry laboratories in different periods of the development of science; moreover, for the most recent periods it is desirable to make use of Russian laboratories, copying, on a small scale, parts of these laboratories. Thus, it would seem interesting to reproduce Lomonosov’s laboratory, Mendeleev’s laboratory, and so on.

The Museum’s furnishings should be so well adapted for demonstrations that they would make it possible to conduct, every week, demonstrations for the broad masses of the contemporary achievements of science. Young scientists taking part in such demonstrations could systematically, through the proper selection of topics, broaden the horizons of their listeners, who would be imbued with due respect for science and its conquests, without which sound state-building and the development of technology are impossible.

In our proposal, the Museum attached to the Association should house, in a number of halls, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, and Technology, and these halls should be located near a large auditorium that would make it possible to deliver lectures in a modern setting.

For purposes of demonstrations in Astronomy, it is necessary to have a small observatory where, under the guidance of appropriate persons, observers could become acquainted with the outstanding phenomena of this field of knowledge.

It seems to us that a visual method of teaching broad circles of the public should attract their attention more than oral instruction in lectures, and these latter should then serve as a valuable supplement to the initial visual acquaintance with the subject, uniting scattered information into a single whole and giving it proper theoretical illumination. (GAORSS L. O.—3 f. 2555 sv. 6 d. 73, l. 40).