Bibliography

M. V. Lomonosov. Complete Works. Volume Four. Works on physics, astronomy, and instrument-making. 1744–1765. Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow–Leningrad, 1955, 830 pp., print run 10,000, price 25 rubles.

Over the past thirty-nine years, Soviet scholars have carried out extensive work in the study of the vast scholarly legacy left by M. V. Lomonosov, and have published about one hundred monographs and more than a thousand articles devoted to his life and work. However, despite this very extensive literature on the creative achievements of the brilliant Russian scholar-encyclopedist, many aspects of his many-sided scientific and practical activity, unfortunately, have remained insufficiently studied to this day. It is therefore understandable that our public received with great satisfaction the publication, undertaken by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1950, of the Complete Works of M. V. Lomonosov.

The appearance of each new volume of the works of the founder of science and materialist philosophy in Russia is a significant event in the scientific and cultural life of our country. Of especially great interest is the recently published fourth volume of the works of M. V. Lomonosov, which brings together his writings on physics, astronomy, and instrument-making, written in the period 1744–1765.

The volume opens with Lomonosov’s first work in the field of astronomy—a translation from German into Russian of the large work by Gottfried Heinsius, “Description of the Comet That Appeared at the Beginning of 1744,” which gives a historical survey of all views on comets and observations of them. Subsequently, on the basis of a long series of observations and studies of polar lights and experiments with atmospheric electricity, Lomonosov developed his own, highly original physical theory of the composition and structure of comets and comet tails. “Comets of pale glow and tails,” he wrote in the concluding part of the “Discourse on Air Phenomena Proceeding from Electrical Force,” “the cause of which has not yet been examined, I without doubt consider an appearance akin to the northern lights in electrical force.”

For a very long time this was the best theory of comets, and now, two hundred years later, when our astrophysical knowledge has changed beyond recognition, it may be supposed that the character of the phenomena, or, better to say, the nature of the phenomena occurring in comets, was in the main correctly anticipated by Lomonosov. Thus, for example, P. I. Popov, K. L. Baev, B. V. Vorontsov-Velyaminov, and R. V. Kunitskii write: “It is possible that

in them (comets—H. L.) there also appear forces of electrical repulsion, as M. V. Lomonosov had already supposed*).

In addition to the translation of the “Description,” Lomonosov’s work as an astronomer is presented in the book under review by the following studies: “A Note Read at a Meeting of the Academic Assembly on December 8, 1760, concerning the Complaints of F. Aepinus about the Criticism to Which Lomonosov Subjected His Article,” “News of the Approaching Passage of Venus between the Sun and the Earth,” “Indication of the Path of Venus across the Solar Plane, as It May Appear to Observers in Various Parts of the World on May 26, 1761,” “Notes and Calculations for the Work ‘Indication of the Path of Venus across the Solar Plane’,” “The Phenomenon of Venus on the Sun, Observed at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences on May 26, 1761,” “Preparatory Notes for the Work ‘The Phenomenon of Venus on the Sun’,” and also, partly, the essay “A Discourse on the Greater Accuracy of the Maritime Route” and “Chemical and Optical Notes.”

In studying all the works listed above, there appears before the reader the image of a broadly erudite astronomer of his time, who was able, through observations made at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences in May, to enrich astronomical science with a number of outstanding discoveries.

First of all, these include Lomonosov’s discovery of an atmosphere on the planet Venus. The history of this discovery, in brief, is as follows. On May 26, 1761, more than a hundred astronomers in various countries of the world observed the famous transit of Venus across the disk of the Sun, but among them only Lomonosov noticed and drew attention to the fact that, when the planet was entering upon the solar disk, the edge made by Venus appeared indistinct, “whereas before it had been very clean and everywhere even.” When Venus approached the other edge of the Sun to within one-tenth of its diameter, Lomonosov noticed that “on the edge of the Sun there appeared a ‘pimple’ (convexity—H. L.), which became the more distinct the closer Venus came to its external passage. Soon the pimple was lost, and Venus suddenly appeared without an edge.” The end of the phenomenon was marked, as was the beginning, by a certain blurring of the edge of the Sun’s disk at the place where the planet descended. These and other scarcely noticeable features of the observed picture of Venus’s transit across the solar disk Lomonosov quite rightly interpreted as evidence that “the planet Venus is surrounded by a noble atmosphere, such (if only not greater) as is poured around our earthly sphere.”

Lomonosov set forth the results of his observations in the brochure “The Phenomenon of Venus on the Sun, Observed at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences on May 26, 1761,” published in June of the same year in Russian and German. However, this work by the scholar, which for the first time established the presence of an atmosphere on the planet Venus, like many other of his outstanding works and discoveries, long remained unnoticed both in Russia and abroad. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century did the well-known Russian astronomer, Academician D. I. Perevoshchikov, note in one of his works that “…Lomonosov very thoroughly explained them [the observations of the rim] by the existence of an atmosphere around Venus. Thirty years later, after a brief polemic between Schröter and V. Herschel, these famous astronomers agreed with the existence of an atmosphere around Venus, which was later confirmed by Arago as well. Thus, to Lomonosov belongs the honor of the first discovery of the atmosphere around Venus”**).

) P. P. Popov, K. L. Baev, B. A. Vorontsov-Velyaminov, R. V. Kunitsky, Astronomy*, Uchpedgiz RSFSR, Moscow, 1953, p. 314.

) D. M. Perevoshchikov, Works of Lomonosov in Physics and Physical Geography. Raduga, 1865, book IV, pp. 176–201.

It should be noted, however, that Lomonosov’s merit before his homeland and science, as is evident from the work The Appearance of Venus, lies not only in the fact that he was the first to discover the existence of a gaseous envelope around Venus, but also in the fact that, on the basis of this discovery, he creatively developed the materialistic idea of the infinity of the universe and of the countless worlds on which life like ours is possible. To this it should also be added that the discovery of an atmosphere on Venus enabled Lomonosov, with redoubled energy, to come out in defense of Copernicus’s heliocentric system and to strengthen the position of the supporters of Copernicanism in Russia.

A significant place in Lomonosov’s work as an astronomer is occupied by questions of nautical astronomy. And this is no accident. A native of the Pomor region, he knew perfectly well the difficulties of seafaring in his time and considered it absolutely necessary that skilled astronomers, mathematicians, hydrographers, and mechanics “strive unanimously to increase with new useful inventions the safety of navigation.” This ardent desire to place science, and astronomy in particular, at the service of practice and of man found expression in a number of new methods of astronavigation observations at sea developed by Lomonosov in 1758–1759, described in detail by him in the essay entitled “Discourse on the Great Precision of the Sea Route.” In this same work Lomonosov advanced the grandiose project of creating an international “Maritime Academy,” in which, in the scientist’s view, the successes and experience of all countries in practical astronomy, seafaring, and shipbuilding were to be generalized.

Lomonosov’s enormous and fruitful scientific activity in the field of nautical astronomy is also attested by the numerous notes he made during 1762–1763 in his Chemical and Optical Notes. Thus, for example, notes nos. 21, 53, 62, 66, 95–97, 100, 102, 103 (p. 9), 105, 116, 120, 122–125 tell of the fact that Lomonosov developed a new method for determining longitude at sea by observing a pair of stars in the same vertical with the aid of a specially invented sextant of a special kind—the “sea zhezl.” “The advantages of my method,” wrote the scientist, “over the lunar method and over Lacaille’s consist: 1) in greater accuracy, 2) in less trouble during observations, 3) in convenience of calculation.” In another note, no. 119, it is stated that the new method of finding longitude can be useful not only at sea: from it “on land there is benefit for geography.” Note no. 121 is also extremely interesting; it reveals Lomonosov’s noble intention to make the new method of determining longitude by means of the “sea zhezl” the property of seafarers throughout the world: “The book is to be written in Latin, and the use of the instrument and tables—in Russian, Latin, French, English, Spanish, Dutch.” Premature death, however, did not allow the scientist-humanist to realize his remarkable plan; the book The Sea Zhezl, as Lomonosov wished to call it, never saw the light of day.

Along with the development of new methods of astronavigation observations, Lomonosov also strove to improve fundamentally the methods of astronomo-geodetic work used in his time. Highly indicative in this respect is the scientist’s work published in the present volume, entitled “A New and Very Simple Method for Finding and Describing the Noon Line.” In it Lomonosov proposed, with the aid of a specially invented instrument, to determine the direction of the meridian not by observing the corresponding altitudes of the Sun before and after noon, as was done in his time, but by observing the elongations of circumpolar stars, when the angle between the vertical and the meridian is greatest.

Lomonosov’s new method for determining the direction of the meridian had, in comparison with the method of observing the corresponding altitudes of the Sun, the advantages that in it the change in the Sun’s declination and atmospheric refraction played no role; the observer did not have to keep track of the time by clocks; he had the necessary time to record accurately, without haste, the position of the star at the moment of elongation; and, finally—which is especially important to note—one observation was quite sufficient to establish the desired result, i.e., to determine the direction of the meridian.

Thus, the simplification made by Lomonosov in determining the meridian and, consequently, the refinement of measurements of the azimuths of terrestrial objects undoubtedly opened up broad possibilities for the development of astronomical-geodetic work in Russia.

We do not know whether this new method for determining the direction of the meridian was practically applied during the lifetime of its author in Russian astronomy and geodesy; however, there is no doubt that Lomonosov, as a scholar-patriot who always strove “to serve not pure science, but only the fatherland,” worked energetically to have “the new method—M. L. recommended to our observers (geodesists—I. L.), appointed to determine, by means of astronomical observations, the longitudes and latitudes of the most important places of our vast empire.” “In this way,” Lomonosov argued, “time, labor, and expenses may be saved, and the needs of our common fatherland more quickly satisfied.”

It must be noted that even in our time the method proposed by Lomonosov for determining the direction of the meridian is one of the most accurate*).

Of great interest for the study of Lomonosov’s versatile and innovative activity in the field of astronomy are also the notes in his “Chemical and Optical Notes” on questions of stellar photometry. Thus, for example, note No. 58 relates that Lomonosov constructed a photometer “for comparing the light of stars.” Note No. 55 describes the design of the photometer and the method of using it. Another note, No. 126, testifies that the scholar, with the aid of the aforementioned photometer, compared the brightness of stars with the light of the Sun. Thus Lomonosov, like Huygens and Bouguer, by applying photometry to the study of stars, anticipated by many decades the development, at the beginning of the last century, of one of the most important methods of modern astrophysics.

On the whole, all the works on astronomy published in the volume under review show us M. V. Lomonosov as the greatest Russian astronomer of the eighteenth century, one of the founders of modern astrophysics, the founder of Russian nautical astronomy, a scholar who deeply believed that “with the host of all the other sciences astronomy too will grow,... and that the most glorious of the muses, Urania, will establish her dwelling predominantly in our fatherland.”

Let us now turn to Lomonosov’s creative work in the field of instrument making, represented in the present volume by the following works: “A Physical Problem about a Night-Seeing Tube,” “A Problem to Be Proposed for a Prize,” “A New, Very Easy and Accurate Method of Finding and Marking the Midday Line,” “The Horizontoskop, a New Optical Instrument,” “Excerpt with a Calculation of a One-Mirror Telescope,” “On the Improvement of Spyglasses,” “Discussion on the Greater Accuracy of the Sea Route,” “Chemical and Optical Notes.”

) M. S. Zverev, Fundamental Astronomy. Advances in Astronomical Sciences*, vol. VI, Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow, 1954, p. 9.

All these works reveal to the reader one of the most brilliant, most fruitful, and at the same time least studied aspects of Lomonosov’s extensive activity as a designer and inventor, the author of a great number of new instruments—unknown to the science of the eighteenth century—astronomical, navigational, gravimetric, meteorological, optical, physicochemical, and other devices which, in the scholar’s figurative expression, he needed in order “to test everything that can only be measured and determined by calculation.”

A brilliant theoretician and a subtle experimenter, Lomonosov, as the works collected in the volume under review attest, constantly strove to ensure that every scientific theory flowed from experience, was verified by experience, and rested upon experience. “To establish theory from observations,” the scholar wrote in Discourse on the Greater Accuracy of the Sea Route, “and through theory to correct observations—is the best of all means for seeking truth.”

Having correctly solved the problem of the relationship between experiment and theory, Lomonosov, from the very first days of his scientific activity, began energetically to introduce “the instruments of physicists into the field of chemistry... in order, to a known extent, to eliminate or alleviate the difficulties encountered in that science, and to illuminate obscure and hidden phenomena there...” The first three volumes of Lomonosov’s complete works tell of the fact that in 1741 he invented a highly original “catoptrico-dioptric igniting instrument” for conducting chemical experiments. In the subsequent years of his creative work he constructed a viscometer, an instrument for determining the hardness of bodies and the strength of metal wires in tension, “for stretching and compressing bodies,” a refractometer, and a pyrometer of a new design; he fundamentally improved the thermometers, microscopes, analytical balances, air pump, and Papin digester existing in his time, and was the first in the history of natural science to introduce them into the practice of physicochemical research.

It may be said without exaggeration that the introduction into the practice of physicochemical research of so great an arsenal of both improved and entirely new scientific devices, instruments, installations, and apparatuses enabled Lomonosov not only to revolutionize Russian experimental science, but also to bring it to one of the foremost places in the world; it helped to create and develop a new science—physical chemistry—and made it possible for humanity to solve many scientific problems that had long been considered insoluble.

If the works published in the three preceding volumes of the Complete Works make it possible to become acquainted with Lomonosov’s creative work in the field of physics, chemistry, and the instruments and devices he created for experimental purposes, for physicochemical investigations of liquid and solid bodies, then the works published in the fourth volume make it possible to become very thoroughly acquainted with the design, principle of operation, and creative history of the numerous instruments invented by the scholar for the needs of industry, agriculture, navigation, military affairs, and other practical purposes.

Of exceptional interest in this respect is Lomonosov’s work Discourse on the Greater Accuracy of the Sea Route. Here the reader will find a description of the navigational instruments invented by the scholar in different years (chiefly during 1754–1759), about twenty in all—perfectly new and extraordinarily bold in design conception—including: a sextant with an artificial horizon, a special compass for taking azimuths of luminaries—the prototype of modern bearing compasses; a clinometer, a dromometer, a cymatometer, an instrument for determining the speed and direction of a current, a depth gauge previously called “sea scale”—an instrument serving for the precise determination of time at sea, and others.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In addition to the instruments listed above, the Discourse also contains a description of two gravimetric instruments invented by Lomonosov—the “great pendulum” (a large pendulum) and the world’s first static gravimeter, designed to determine changes in the direction and intensity of the force of gravity on the earth’s surface, occurring under the influence of changes in the tide-producing forces of the Moon and the Sun.

Believing that investigations of this kind could be very useful for navigational practice, “for the safety of seafaring,” Lomonosov, as is evident from the recently discovered and first published “Tables” in the present volume (pp. 489–708), made, during 1759–1763, with the aid of instruments he had created, an enormous number of observations of changes in the force of gravity.

It is not without interest to note that in Europe and America the first attempts to apply static methods for measuring the force of gravity were undertaken by Hecker and Briggs only one hundred and fifty years after Lomonosov, while the German geophysicist Haalck comparatively recently created a static gravimeter differing from Lomonosov’s instrument only in having a special device for temperature compensation.

Special attention is deserved by Lomonosov’s invention of the world’s first gas barometer, which was a combination of two thermometers mounted horizontally on a single board—one spirit and one air thermometer.

When the external pressure increased relative to what it had been when the instrument was graduated, the volume of gas in the air thermometer at a given temperature decreased, and its indicator column shifted toward the reservoir, indicating a temperature lower than that shown at the moment of measurement by the mercury thermometer. When the atmospheric pressure decreased, the opposite phenomenon occurred, and the readings of the air thermometer were higher than those of the mercury thermometer.

Extremely simple in its construction, this instrument, unlike the ordinary mercury barometer that existed in Lomonosov’s time, was not subject to the influence of a ship’s shaking, the motion of the sea, or sudden temperature changes in the surrounding environment, and therefore was very convenient for conducting barometric observations at sea, to which Lomonosov attached exceptionally great importance. “...I can give no greater satisfaction to navigators,” the scholar wrote in his “Discourse on the Greater Accuracy of the Sea Route,” “than to provide them with a new marine barometer. It is known how useful it is to foresee in advance severe and dangerous storms, so that they do not overtake us.”

However, Lomonosov’s marine barometer met the same fate as many of his other outstanding inventions—it was long forgotten. Meanwhile, fifty years after Lomonosov’s death, the development of meteorology, topography, laboratory practice, industry, and seafaring compelled many scholars in England, Germany, Russia, France, Holland, Finland, and other countries to take up once again the development of various types of gas barometers. Subsequently, over the course of 140 years, as our investigations of archival and literary materials show, Lomonosov’s long-forgotten gas barometer was reproduced in various modifications as a “new invention” 23 times! This instrument has not lost its significance even today.

A careful study of the Discourse shows that Lomonosov, while working on the creation of an entire series of instruments intended for the purposes of “scientific seafaring,” sought not only to enrich and expand the arsenal of nautical instruments existing in his time with new inventions, but also set himself the task—to maximal-

could automate the measurement of all the principal parameters of ship navigation.

The execution of this bold and at the same time complex task—given the low level of technology in the mid-eighteenth century—was planned by Lomonosov in a series of self-recording navigational instruments, including: a self-recording compass, the prototype of modern course recorders; a mechanical bottom log of the vane type; a clinometer, which automatically traced on a paper tape the deviations of a ship from a given course under the influence of wind; and a wave meter, which recorded the number of waves that had passed under the keel and the amplitude of the ship’s oscillations.

Lomonosov’s activity in the field of automating measurement technology, as is evident from the “Discourse,” was not limited merely to the sphere of maritime affairs. In 1759, on the pages of the same “Discourse,” the scholar proposed in various parts of the terrestrial sphere, in various regions, that “self-recording meteorological observatories be constructed, the location and arrangement of which, with many new instruments, I have long been thinking over...”

Thus Lomonosov, by more than twenty years, anticipated the idea of Lavуазье and Borda concerning the organization of a twenty-four-hour weather service and was the first among the scientists of the world to initiate the comprehensive automation of measurements in the field of meteorology.

Naturally, while working on the solution of the problem of automating measurements in various fields of practice, and opening up new paths in technology, Lomonosov could not help engaging in the improvement of the clocks existing in his time and in the invention of new designs of clocks, which, in the words of K. Marx, were “the first automaton created for practical purposes; the whole theory of the production of uniform motions developed upon them”*).

Here too, as in other areas of his creative work, Lomonosov left a deep mark. In 1759 he invented—independently of the English—the first four-spring marine chronometer in Russia; its drawing and description are found in the “Discourse.” He carried out, as the “Chemical and Optical Notes” relate, extensive experimental work to reduce friction in clocks; he introduced into clockmaking a number of new materials; and he improved the design, forms, and methods of manufacturing individual parts of clock mechanisms.

Working on the improvement and creation of new designs of instruments for measuring time, Lomonosov thereby stood in the first rank of figures who created one of the two material foundations (the clock and the water mill) upon which, as Marx wrote, “the preparatory work for machine industry was built”*).

Lomonosov’s merits in instrumental optics were also great. Over the years of his scientific and practical work in this field, he created—as the published solutions testify—more than ten original optical instruments, including: the world’s first light-strengthening “night-vision” tube, intended for distinguishing at night rocks and ships at sea and finding practical application only in our time in the form of searchlight zenith tubes and marine binoculars; a bathoscope—a bathoscope (an instrument for observing underwater); he developed the design of a fortress periscope with a mechanism for horizontal surveying of the locality (“horizontoscope”); he significantly improved the mirror telescopes existing in his time and built a remarkable optical system for astronomical observations. Twenty-seven years later, a construction exactly like this

*) K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. XIII, 1932, p. 131.

carried out by W. Herschel. In all these inventions, as was justly noted by the late Academician S. I. Vavilov, there appears before us, in a completely vivid and real way, the figure of a remarkable optician, a thinker and theoretician in this field and, at the same time, a tireless original designer...

Just as vividly, in the works published in the present volume, there appears before us the image of a talented technologist who was constantly concerned with improving the methods and means of production that existed in his time. “No one should think,” wrote Lomonosov, “that any science or any art has reached such a degree of perfection that one cannot hope for still greater successes in the future.” Following this principled position in his own creative work, the scholar, as his “Chemical and Optical Notes” tell us, made in the course of 1762–1763 about fifty experimental castings of metallic alloys of various composition, as a result of which he developed a technology, advanced for its time, for producing high-quality alloys for the metal mirrors of reflecting telescopes; he invented and introduced into the practice of instrument making a number of special machine tools, a large number of new instruments and devices.

Being a scholar-encyclopedist, a talented designer and technologist, Lomonosov, unlike most of his contemporary scholars and inventors, who under the conditions of the manufactory period approached the creation of new technology empirically, based the manufacture of his new instruments on profound and rigorous calculations and careful research. At the same time, as the scholar’s writings published in the volume under review show, the sketch, drawing, and experimental sample were only the first stages toward the practical realization of an idea. At the second and subsequent stages, as a rule, the calculations were checked and the designs of individual components of the prototype were corrected; errors and inconsistencies in the initial execution were eliminated; the technology was improved both for making individual parts and for assembling separate units and the instrument as a whole. Very revealing in this respect are the scholar’s “Chemical and Optical Notes.” Here the reader will find, along with numerous calculations and sketches, a large list of design and technological improvements that Lomonosov introduced and planned to introduce into the mirror telescopes he made, the marine barometer, microscopes, thermometers, Hadley’s quadrant, the marine chronometer, and other instruments.

Created on the basis of rigorous calculations, experiments, and comprehensive research, many of Lomonosov’s instruments not only became firmly established in public practice during the lifetime of their creator, but outlived their time and have not lost their significance even in our own day. Yet the significance of Lomonosov’s twenty-five years of work in instrument making is not determined by this alone. His works were the first “university” for Russian instrument makers; on their basis there developed the best creative traditions of Russian instrument making—a deep organic connection between science and practice, unceasing innovation, and irreconcilability toward inertia and routine.

V. I. Lenin believed that “historical merits are judged not by what historical figures did not give in comparison with contemporary demands, but by what they did give that was new in comparison with their predecessors”*). Guided by these indications of V. I. Lenin in determining the place, role, and significance of M. V. Lomonosov

) V. I. Lenin, Works*, vol. II, “A Characterization of Economic Romanticism,” 4th ed., p. 166.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

in the history of instrument-making, it may be asserted that he laid the foundation for the scientific design and technology of manufacturing instruments in Russia and, by right, may be called the founder of domestic instrument-making.

Lomonosov left us not only the richest treasury of his works in various fields of science and practice, but also the key to his creative laboratory. We have in mind the full text, being published for the first time in the reviewed volume for a broad readership, of the Chemical and Optical Notes, which Lomonosov kept during 1762–1763.

This work contains 169 notes. Each of them, as a rule, occupies several lines. But these terse lines are unusually rich in thoughts, ideas, plans, and designs. Every line, every word carries an enormous semantic load. There is nothing superfluous here; everything is important, everything is necessary.

In these Notes there is the whole of Lomonosov—the theoretical scientist and experimenter, the designer and inventor, the technologist and organizer of production, the tireless worker and innovator carrying out his creative search in the name of the progress of Russian and world science, for the good of his people and his country. He constructs lathe- and grinding-machine tools, improves invented ones and creates new instruments, draws up plans for organizing production at the Ust-Ruditsa factory of “mirror matter” for instrumental optics and various glass articles of the type made by Florentine masters, argues with Newton about the theory of colors, conducts experiments and develops the principles of the arrangement of all three types of colorimeters now in use (monochromatic, three-color, and subtractive), creates the large mosaic picture The Battle of Poltava and works out a plan for conducting experiments to obtain artificial crystals, proposes a new method for arranging fountains “without a conduit with high places of water, with all sorts of rivers, various figures and colors,” and at the same time undertakes the manufacture “at his own expense” of a new globe “in the Russian language,” carries out photometry of the light of stars and develops a new method of distilling mercury for its purification, advances the idea of the advisability of studying the physical nature of fixed stars and of our planets by satellites in order to elucidate the general physical picture of the world, and immediately proposes a new technology for preparing compositions (“mastics”) for polishing metal mirrors; new methods of astronavigational observations at sea are replaced by notes for future books and memoirs; for his brilliant imagination it is already conceivable to discover a sea in Venus’s atmosphere, similar to the Earth’s seas, and he prepares names for them in advance.

It is difficult to convey and evaluate in a short article all the wealth of thoughts, ideas, and designs contained in the scientist’s Chemical and Optical Notes. This is truly an invaluable treasury of his works. On becoming acquainted with it, the figure of an advanced and indefatigable researcher, a courageous fighter for the development of science and technology in Russia, a bold thinker blazing new trails and opening new horizons in the most diverse fields of human knowledge, rises before the reader’s eyes.

There can be no doubt that a deep and comprehensive study both of the Chemical and Optical Notes and of all the other works published in the reviewed volume will enable Soviet researchers to reveal more than one new page of the many-sided creativity of the great son of the Russian people.

The fourth volume now issued, like the previously published volumes of the Complete Collected Works of M. V. Lomonosov, is well produced and supplied with a fairly detailed scholarly apparatus, consisting of notes,

Bibliography

of a list of conventional abbreviations, an index of personal names, and a list of illustrations on separate sheets. A shortcoming of the scholarly apparatus of this volume—as, indeed, of those issued earlier—must be considered the absence in the notes of a concise indication of the novelty, significance, and, most important, the further evolution of the large number of inventions made by Lomonosov and of the ideas he advanced in the field of instrument making. This could and should have been done by the compiler of the notes on Lomonosov’s instruments—V. L. Chenakal—by shortening a whole series of details of secondary and tertiary importance, of which there is a great abundance. It would have been still better to include in the volume an extensive editorial article in which the reader would find a brief but profound analysis of all the scholar’s principal works published in the book. Nor can the editors be forgiven for the fact that the volume has no subject index, even if such an index is intended to be published in the final volume for the entire complete collected works of M. V. Lomonosov.

One must hope that in the subsequent volumes the scholarly apparatus will be considerably improved, since the study of M. V. Lomonosov’s creative work has assumed such scope and acquired such significance that one may now speak of a new branch of historical scholarship—Lomonosov studies.

I. B. Litinetskii.