The Presidential Library’s collections to mark the Day of Russian Science

February 8 is celebrated annually as the Day of Russian Science. The history of the holiday began in the time of Peter I. By his order, it was on February 8, 1724 that the Governing Senate issued a decree on the establishment of the Academy of Sciences and Arts.

In 1999, in commemoration of the 275th anniversary of the founding of the Academy of Sciences in Russia, the Presidential Decree established the “Day of Russian Science” - a holiday of academicians, scientists, professors and students who decided to devote their lives to scientific and research activities.

The Presidential Library’s portal contains several collections that tell about Russian science and scientists.

The largest of them, the Academy of Sciences and the Formation of Russian Science, allows using official documents, archives, research, visual and video materials to trace the history of the country's largest center for fundamental research.

For example, the 1st volume of the 10-volume edition Materials for the History of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (1885) provides a letter of 1721 to Peter I from the French Royal Academy of Sciences is cited, which says that the Russian emperor is revered as a monarch, "who owns his great power uses the sciences to produce in their spacious states, into which they have not previously been able to enter”. Here is presented the project for the organization of the Russian Academy, proposed by the life physician Lavrenty Blumentrost, who later became its first president. The publication ends with documents from 1750, including a congratulatory and thankful speech at the end of a public exam, a request from students to visit the "anatomical department", an instruction from the office about the work of a bookshop and others. The oldest document in the electronic collection, Regulations of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts in St. Petersburg, dates back to 1747, and the latest is the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation concerning the activities of the Russian Academy of Sciences, issued in 2021.

In 1735, the future great scientist and encyclopedist Mikhail Lomonosov, who became the first Russian academician in the field of natural science, began his studies at the university founded at the Academy. His scientific, educational and organizational activities are available in the collection Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765), which includes works and portraits of the scientist, as well as studies dedicated to him, for example, the book of 1869 by Slavist Anton Budilovich about Lomonosov as a naturalist and philologist.

February 8 is not only the Day of Russian Science, but also the birthday of the outstanding scientist - Dmitri Mendeleev, according to On this Day section on the Presidential Library’s portal. Various materials of the collection Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907) – works of the scientist; his correspondence; archival documents on scientific, pedagogical and social activities; modern studies of his scientific heritage – show Mendeleev’s cherished thoughts, Where to build oil refineries? and how, according to Leon Trotsky, Dmitri Mendeleev and Marxism are connected.

The development of any scientific theories involves their application in practice, which is carried out, in particular, through inventive activity. The collection Russian Inventions: Pages of History spotlights laws which regulated invention at different times, Russian genius inventors and individual inventions, the intricacies of the patent business.

All collections that spotlight the development of science in Russia are freely available on the Presidential Library’s portal in the Collections section.