James m lomonosov biography

Mikhail Lomonosov was the great polymath of the Russian Enlightenment.

Born in the deepest provinces of Northern Russia, he managed to gain a first-class education through a combination of natural intelligence and sheer force of will, and went on to make significant advances in several fields of science, as well as writing one of the first Russian grammars, several volumes of history, and a great quantity of poetry.

In short, he was instrumental in pulling Russia further into the modern world, and in helping to make St. Petersburg a centre of learning as great as almost any in Europe.

Lomonosov was born in the village of Denisovka (now Lomonosovo), a village about 100 kilometers south-east of Arkhangelsk on the Severnaya Dvina river.

His father was a peasant fisherman who had grown rich transporting goods from Arkhangelsk to settlements in the far north.