Lomonosov, Mikhail Vasilyevich

Category: Scientist

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (Russian: Михаи́л Васи́льевич Ломоно́сов; November 19 [O.S. November 8] 1711 – April 15 [O.S. April 4] 1765) was a Russian polymath, whom Soviet historians regard as the founder not only of Russian science but of much of modern science.

Although his works have been published extensively in the U.S.S.R., Lomonosov’s scientific theories are little known throughout the rest of the world, and much of the information about him that has accumulated in the literature is inaccurate.

Fragmentary translations into Western languages have been made of some of the papers of this versatile scientist, but most of his writings are available only in the original Latin or in Russian versions. One of the few translations to present his work in English is On the Corpuscular Theory; which was translated, with an Introduction, by Henry M. Leicester.  We have used this translation in the following entry.

Overall, however, the intellectual ability of the man himself deserves to be better known. He became the director of the University and Gymnasium at the Petersburg Academy of Science in 1760 and in 1763, was named as a Member of the Academy of Arts in Petersburg.  He was also a Member of the Academic Chancellery.

A lunar crater bears his name, as does a crater on Mars. In 1948, the underwater Lomonosov Ridge in the Arctic Ocean was named in his honour. Moscow State University was renamed '’M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University'’ in his honour in 1940.

The Lomonosov Gold Medal was established in 1959 and is awarded annually by the Russian Academy of Sciences to a Russian and a foreign scientist.

Achievements

Lomonosov made important contributions to literature, the arts, education and science – and many branches of science: chemistry, physics, meteorology, mineralogy, geography, geology, electricity, - as well as philology and history.

Literature

Lomonosov helped the development and use of the Russian language and literature as a whole.  In 1757, he published his "Russian Grammar", the first scientific grammar of the Russian language; and in his "Foreword on the Utility of the Ecclesiastical Books in the Russian Language," he showed how spoken Russian and Church Slavonic, could be combined in three styles, according to the loftiness of the writer's goals:

• the first, "high" style could be used for tragedies, odes and elegies, and could include more Slavonicsims; ‘Church Slavonic’, had connections to Ancient Greece via the Byzantines
• the second, "middle" style, consisting of an equal mix of Russian and Slavonic, could be used for drama, correspondence, and satire;
• and the third, "low" style using mostly Russian words could be used for comedies, epigrams and everyday speech.

This understanding of style proved extremely influential in the development of the poetic tradition in Russia. 

Whilst in Freiburg, Lomonosov turned his attention to writing poetry, mostly odes. Reacting to Trediakovsky's tract of 1735, "The New and Brief Method for Writing Russian Verse," Lomonosov came up with his own method and wrote "A Letter on the Rules of Composing Russian Poetry." In developing Trediakovsky's basic idea into a more flexible system, Lomonosov established the syllabatonic mode that remains the most basic element of Russian verse composition even today.

To further his literary theories, he wrote more than 20 solemn ceremonial odes. The period 1742-1744, was an intensive period of poetic production. Works from this period include his most famous odes, "Morning Meditation on the Greatness of God" and “Evening Meditation on the Greatness of God on the occasion of the Northern Lights" (see observations).  It should be apparent from the titles of these poems, that he was a devout Orthodox Christian.  For all those Communists and atheists who like rewriting history according to their own beliefs, we have provided these two poems as observations.  It may be worth reflecting on the words:

And

However much an atheist or Communist may try to distort the truth, these are the words of a devout believer.

Not all his poems were religious.  In 1752, he published a long poem entitled  "On the Utility of Glass"!  The Academy published the first collection of Lomonosov's poetry in 1751. 

In 1760 Lomonosov published a History of Russia.  In addition, he attempted to write a grand epic about Peter the Great, to be based on the Aeneid by Vergil, but he died before he could finish it.

Lomonosov believed fervently in the need to maintain balance between creative and artistic pursuits such as painting and poetry and the perhaps more intellectual pursuits of chemistry or physics.  As an example of this artistic creative and intellectual balance, Mikhail was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the Petersburg Academy of Science in 1745, but also published the full, and paradoxically lengthy, "Short Guide to Rhetoric" in 1748, at the same time as the construction of his chemistry laboratory was completed.

The extraordinary breadth of his talent is evident in the fact he also wrote plays – in 1750,
Empress Elizaveta ordered both Lomonosov and Trediakovsky to write plays for the developing national theater. Lomonosov composed a five-act tragedy, Tamira and Selim, which was both successfully performed and well received.

Education

 Lomonosov was instrumental in the founding of Moscow University, now Russia’s largest and most prestigious institution of higher learning.  Moscow State University bears his name.

Arts

In 1763, Lomonosov set up a glass factory that produced the first stained glass mosaics outside of Italy. There were forty mosaics attributed to Lomonosov himself, with only twenty-four surviving to the present day. Among the best are the portrait of Peter the Great and the Battle of Poltava, measuring 4.8 × 6.4 meters. 

Science

Lomonosov proved the organic origin of soil, peat, coal, oil, and amber.  He was the first person to record the freezing of mercury. In 1745, he published a catalogue of over 3,000 minerals.  In 1763 he published On The Strata of the Earth - his most significant geological work.

In 1760, he explained the formation of icebergs.  Lomonosov's observation of iceberg formation led into his pioneering work in geography.

Lomonosov got close to the theory of continental drift, theoretically predicted the existence of Antarctica (he argued that icebergs of the South Ocean could be formed only on a dry land covered with ice), and invented tools which made writing and calculating directions and distances at sea easier.

Among his other discoveries was the atmosphere of Venus.  In 1761, he observed the orbit of Venus around the sun and discovered that its atmosphere consists of dense gas. 

In 1762, Lomonosov presented an improved design of a reflecting telescope to the Russian Academy of Sciences forum. His telescope had its primary mirror adjusted at an angle of four degrees to the telescope's axis. This made the image focus at the side of the telescope tube, where the observer could view the image with an eyepiece without blocking the image. However, papers on this invention were not published until 1827, so this type of telescope has become associated with a similar design by William Herschel, the Herschelian telescope.

But he also developed a number of hypotheses that help explain apporting, levitation, fire walking and a host of other so called 'occult' or supernatural events. 

Scientific discoveries

The Law of Conservation of Mass or Principle of Mass Conservation

The law of conservation of mass or principle of mass conservation states that for any system closed to all transfers of matter and energy, the mass of the system must remain constant over time, as system mass cannot change quantity if it is not added or removed. Hence, the quantity of mass is "conserved" over time. The law implies that mass can neither be created nor destroyed.

Atoms can of course be rearranged in ‘space’, to form new aggregates, where the bonds between them – the forces of attraction and repulsion determine the new crystalline state, but the atoms remain as atoms in the same numbers.  This law applies during any chemical reaction, nuclear reaction, or radioactive decay, the total mass of the reactants or starting materials must be equal to the mass of the products.

The idea of mass conservation was stated philosophically by the Greeks, and practically by Persian scholars such as Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī (1201–1274), who wrote that "A body of matter cannot disappear completely. It only changes its form, condition, composition, colour and other properties and turns into a different complex or elementary matter".  Thus Lomonosov did not discover this principle, but he was one of the first to use experiments to prove it around 1748.

 

Others then started to experiment along the same lines and much of the understanding of this fundamental law was promulgated by scientists such as Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) who expressed these ideas in 1774 in written papers. Others who also helped to spread these ideas and did work on the subject include Joseph Black (1728–1799), Henry Cavendish (1731–1810), and Jean Rey (1583–1645).  Jean Servais Stas (21 August 1813 – 13 December 1891), who was a Belgian analytical chemist, performed a number of prolonged and exhaustive experiments which served to support the accuracy of the proposition.

Attraction, repulsion and their impact on the phenomenon of levitation

Lomonosov was not consistent in his description of the forces of attraction and repulsion – a concept which is, after all, quite a difficult one to accept.  But it is clear that as his theories and hypotheses became clearer and more coherent, he accepted both:

Lomosov did not add a great deal to this general theory, although it is clear the idea somehow managed to continue to emerge later in other guises, through other people.  But he did understand the implications in part, as the observation on An Attempt at a Theory of the Elastic Force of Air shows.

‘Weight’ as a concept does not actually exist, it is an expression of the ratio of the repulsive and attractive forces, between two or more aggregates. 

 Thus atoms/aggregates with extremely high attractive forces in relation to their repulsive force, ‘weigh’ a great deal more than atoms/aggregates such as the gases, where their repulsive forces are that much greater.

And it would seem that these two forces can be controlled so that man can levitate or make himself appear 'heavier' to another person .  Thus if we take an example, D D Home in a trance condition, was seen by a number of witnesses to levitate - fly out of one window and enter through another.  D D Home himself was not in control, because he was out for the count, but his 'helpers' manipulated the forces of attraction and repulsion such that the forces of repulsion of his aggregate became stronger and he could float.

Dynamo the Magician is able to make himself appear heavier, and lighter, thus he can manipulate both the forces of attraction and repulsion:

On attributes, functions, atoms -  'ghosts' and 'angels'

All atoms are formed of energy, and each atom displays the properties which make it into that entity.  Thus oxygen has certain properties, carbon dioxide does, so these are functional objects – atoms or aggregates.

Lomonosov in a paper entitled On the Relation of the Amount of Material and Weight  does not make this great leap of understanding, he assumes a ‘physical’ set of ‘corpuscles’ - molecules and other aggregates,-  BUT almost lost in the paragraphs is a discussion on the existence of ‘invisible’  corpuscles and particles as well. 

Lomnosov calls them imponderables, because in the 1700s the idea of software as an analogy was not available to him!!

He says there is ‘an ethereal fluid’ = Energy in which all these atoms and aggregates exist [held together or apart by repulsive and attractive forces]. 

But he also says that there are particles [atoms] and corpuscles [molecules and aggregates] in this energy that are both ‘visible’ and not visible – capable of being perceived and not capable of being perceived, and by this he did not mean because they are small, he meant there are just some things we will never see, even if we were able to burrow down to microscopic levels, simply because our perception system is not geared to perceiving them.  We very obviously do not see gases, such as hydrogen or oxygen or carbon dioxide, so this is an obvious example.

But he was quite ready to admit there may be a whole host of other things we cannot perceive either.

One hastens to add here, that at no stage in Lomonsov's papers did he mention ghosts or angels or any other such phenomena, but by saying that there may be aggregates that we can not normally perceive, he was effectively saying that such things could exist - other realms could exist, parallel universes could exist, of which we would never be aware because our perception system - the 5 senses - was geared to not processing the messages from these entities and realms.

By extension it may be that other creatures, because they have different perception systems, can perceive things we cannot.  A message is sent out by an object - a 'perfume' say, and a dog may be able to process that message whereas a human being may not be able to.

Lomonosov argued that sound, light/colour, taste, touch and so on are just a tiny number of the many FUNCTIONS that do exist for aggregates – he calls them qualities, or attributes, but a quality has to be expressed functionally thus essentially colour, taste, sound etc are all attributes that are functionally expressed by a 'particle' or 'corpuscle' [atom or aggregate].

The extraordinary implications of this almost passing reflection on his part, is that he foresaw a 'programmed' universe.

As a speculative aside, it is possible that every aggregate is continually broadcasting the attributes and functions it possesses as messages on the matrix, whilst processing the messages it receives from other aggregates and acting accordingly, according to its state.

Intensity and spin

Every function has a set action, a predictable outcome, but it also has an extra dimension – that of Intensity.  This is not the same as vibrational level, it is a dimension related to the strength of the function.  The Intensity varies from no activity at all to very high levels of intensity – strength of function - both positive and negative.  We have provided an example of how this works with various  Emotions using colour coding to denote both Contrast [red/blue] and Intensity [light dark] - see this LINK

Lomonosov stated that the intensity is determined by the spin rate [the concept of spin is mentioned in a paper, also provided as an observation].

He argued for intensity to be applied to functions and not particles/atoms or aggregates and thus for spin rates to be applied to functions and not particles. 

Functions on or off

The layout of the Atom  and each Aggregate may be thought of as a series of concentric circles.  Lomonosov specifically calls them 'spherical'.  Each band is a 'vibrational' layer.  If we try to see this diagrammatically, and plot the circles against the 'vibration' layers, then each function or system of the universe is to be found at a specific layer vibrationally.  If I represent a function/system using a rectangle you can see that they will exist in different layers even though they are all to be found in every aggregate and atom.

There are thus two dimensions applied to every function - its intensity determined by its spin rate - and its vibrational level which simply means where in the concentric layers it is to be found - which sphere. 

If the spin rate of the units of energy of which a particular function is programmed are zero, the function is not expressed.  If the spin rates of the units of energy are not zero, the function is expressed and the spin rate will determine the intensity, with which it is expressed.

There is every reason to believe that the diagram above is reversed as a mirror image as functions have contrast - have a positive and a negative aspect, and as such that Dante's hell layers with all their functions, do in fact exist.

Dante's Hell as mapped out by McCulloch

Remember that some of these functions are there to process input from other aggregates.  Thus one aggregate may send a message declaring it is 'blue', and the message is then processed by a function in another aggregate that recognises 'blueness'. 

The ability to perceive anything on our part is thus, by extension, partly spin rate dependent. 

If we can rouse an otherwise inactive function by increasing the spin rate of its units of energy, we will suddenly acquire a function we did not have and that function may be the ability to 'perceive' messages from aggregates whose messages we cannot normally process.   Any aggregate [an angel say] whose functions are normally imperceptible because the functions we actually possess to receive messages from them are 'turned off', may thus become perceptible from this new activated function.   This may be why extremely high emotion of any kind opens us up to spiritual experience.

Spinning and apporting

Apporting as a phenomenon can now [partly] be explained.  The spin rate of the functions that make an aggregate perceptible are reduced to zero - it now becomes invisible.  The aggregate is then transported to its new location, and the reverse process is then executed - the spin rate of the functions that make an aggregate perceptible are increased from zero - it now becomes visible.  In the process Energy will be first taken from the aggregate to decrease the spin rate, and after the process energy will be returned to the aggregate from elsewhere.  There is the possibility that many trance mediums [and magicians] in whose presence apporting took place, supplied that Energy - were like human transformers.

Lomonosov and the Tree of Life

I hope that one can see from the above two diagrams that if one joins them together one gets an Egg – the cosmic egg.  Thus the cosmic Egg is a diagrammatic model of each aggregate [entity type] and its functions.  Every Entity has all functions within it but only some are active.  ‘We’ have the universe at our disposal because each of us is an Egg of functions – or as Professor Wheeler might have expressed it – quantum foam. 

At the middle point [round about where Humpty Dumpty’s belt comes] the world as we perceive it is placed. 

Then above we have the symbolic tree of life with its functional branches and below the roots also containing functions.    Sometimes an Egg and sometimes a pyramid or a diamond or even a ziggurat! 

Lomonosov came from an area of Russia which was more strongly aligned to the Norse traditions than to any eastern form of mysticism and ultimately he was describing Yggdrasil.

 

'Heat' and Light as functions of an aggregate - the relevance to Fire walking

If the vessel in which the aggregates are held is ‘heated’, the Law of conservation does not appear superficially to always hold.  In other words, for a ‘thermodynamically closed’ system (i.e., one which is closed to exchanges of matter, but open to exchanges of non-material energy, such as heat and work, with the surroundings) ‘mass’ is (apparently) only approximately conserved.

The problem here is that the wrong assumptions have been made - there is no ‘matter’, and there is no 'thermodynamically closed system'. 

The process ‘heating’ for example, works with and through the containers.  The containers are in fact just part of the overall matrix, there is no closed system. A message is sent from one system external to the container to the system internal to the container through the container and invokes a function in the system within - 'heat' and remembering that different aggregates have different 'temperatures' when the same stimulus is applied, then the function is possibly not one but many. 

In Lomonosov's Oration on the Origin of Light. A New Theory of Colour, [see observations] he used the example of lime and water to show that 'Heating' is simply another function of an aggregate.  There are a number of very important implications from this.  

First - Measuring ‘mass’ in a so called ‘thermodynamically closed’ system is meaningless as one has extended the boundary of the system being measured, sending it messages from outside the system.  If one could close such a system, then the law would hold, the same atoms  would still be found, and the same number would still exist.  They would simply have reconfigured.

Second - if heating is a function it should be capable of being 'turned off', or counteracted by its opposite [cooling].  And this appears to be the way that Fire walking works.  It also explains the abilities of D D Home when he was able to pick up hot coals without any ill effect and place hot coals in other people's hands.

Third  - 'colour' is also a function.  We can ‘see’ - perceive - blue, because the function that transmits the property of blueness to our perception system, is activated and sends a message to that system.

Fourth -  ‘transparency’ is simply the ability of a message relating to appearance coming from an atom of one type, to be passed without change by the atoms of another type – most gases are after all ‘transparent’, as is glass, thus they transmit but do not stop or block a message.  If they block a message then the atom will appear opaque.

In special relativity, this is recognised.  It is why 'light' appears to ‘bend’ near aggregates that have extremely high attractive force.  What is happening is that there are invisible atoms near those aggregates acting as transmitters, which are being attracted towards the object as the message of transmission is being sent.

Life

Lomonosov was born in the village of Denisovka in the Kurostrovsky volost near the village of Kholmogory in the Arkhangelsk province, Russia.  His family were "pomory"-a term referring to coast-dwelling peasants in the White Sea region.

Much of his early schooling came from friends and neighbours.  He received lessons in basic Russian grammar from a neighbour, Ivan Shubnyi, and the local sexton, Semyon Sabelnikov. It is worth noting that for many years, the only books Mikhail had access to, were religious texts.

Simultaneous to this early education, Lomonosov began working with his father, Vasily Doromenevich Lomonosov, who owned a cod-fishing and cargo business. Mikhail spent most of the 1720's traveling both to ports close to home on the White Sea and as far away as the northern Arctic Sea. Among other things, Lomonosov learnt navigation, maritime meteorology, astronomy, pearl-diving and became familiar both with naval culture and with the cultures of northern peoples such as the Finns, Nenets and Laplanders.  Some of Mikhail’s best moments in his childhood were ‘trips with my father to the sea’.

His mother, Vasily's first wife, Elena Ivanovna Sivkova died very early in his life, and was the daughter of a deacon. She taught Mikhail to read and helped him find books; amongst his early books he managed to obtain: "Grammar" by Smotrytsky, "Arithmetic" by Magnitsky, and "Poetry Psalter" by Simeon of Polotsk.  After his mother died, Mikhail was very unfortunate in having to endure two stepmothers, the last of whom was "evil and envious."

In December, 1730, when Mikhail was just 19, the Kholmogory Maritime Chancellery issued him his own passport, thus enabling him to travel on his own. Despite his father's objections, he left Kholmogory on December 9 and arrived in Moscow in early January. In order to get himself into higher education, Mikhail claimed he was the son of a priest; he enrolled in the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy on January 15, 1731.

In 1735, along with 12 of his classmates, Mikhail entered the Imperial Academy of Science in Saint Petersburg. A year later, he was sent, along with two other talented students, to study chemistry and mining in Marburg, Germany.  Mikhail arrived in Germany in 1739, still only 28. 

Wolff plays a very important part in this, because he was generally considered in his day to be the chief expositor of the philosophy of G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716), whose philosophical works he systematized and published.

By 1741, Mikhail was back in Saint Petersburg. He was named adjunct professor of physics at the Academy, and immediately submitted the first of three proposals for the building of Russia's first chemistry laboratory. The proposal was not accepted until 1746. 

It is clear from all that Mikhail did in his life that he did not make the arbitrary separation of the world into physics, chemistry, biology and so on.  These were just facets of the same thing, and a chemistry laboratory was as likely to expose some new facet about physics or biology as it was about chemistry.  It was a place for experimenting.

Last years and Death

In 1757, for the Moscow University press, he began work on the first volume of his collected works, an acknowledgement that he realised the time left to him was limited.  At the end of his life Lomonosov was elected an honorary member of the Stockholm (1760) and Bologna (1764) Academies of Sciences.

In January, 1765, Lomonosov took part in his last function at the Academy.  In the spring of 1765 Lomonosov caught a cold. He died April 15 (old style - April 4) in 1765. Shortly before his death, the Empress Catherine visited. He was buried at the Lazarevsky cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.  He was just 53.

During his residence in Marburg, Lomonosov had boarded with Catharina Zilch, a brewer's widow. He fell in love with Catharina’s daughter Elizabeth Christine Zilch [Elizaveta-Kristina]. They were married in June 1740, the marriage was a happy one and descendants of his are still in existence. 

plus ca change....

References

Among the works of Lomonosov are works on philology, history, chemistry, physics (on atmospheric electricity research), astronomy, geophysics (gravity research), geology and mineralogy.  Examples include:

• "Reflections on the cause of heat and cold" (1744),
• "On the Layers of the Earth" (late 1750s, published In 1763),
• "On the origin of light, a new theory of colors representing" (1756)
• "On the birth of metals from the shaking of the earth" (1757)
• “Discourses on the Great Accuracy of the Sea Route "(1759),
• "The phenomenon of Venus in the Sun Observed" (1761),
• "On the Preservation and Reproduction of the Russian People" (1761, treatise),
• "The First Foundations of Metallurgy or Ore Mining" (1763 1225 copies),
• "On the phenomena of air from electric force occurring" (1763),
• "Ancient Russian history from the beginning of the Russian people to the death of the Grand Duke Yaroslav the First, or to 1054" (1 and 2 parts, published in 1766).

Among the literary legacy of Lomonosov are letters, idylls, epigrams, odes, poems, and tragedies, for example:

• On the Taking of Khotin (1739, ode, published in 1751),
• Ode to the Emperor John III's Birthday
• The First Trophies of His Majesty John III Through the glorious victory over the Swedes
• Hymn to the Beard (1757, Satire),

Observations

For iPad/iPhone users: tap letter twice to get list of items.

• Lomonosov, Mikhail Vasilyevich - A Morning Meditation on God’s Grandeur
• Lomonosov, Mikhail Vasilyevich - An Evening Reflection Upon God's Grandeur Prompted by the Great Northern Lights
• Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov – An Attempt at a Theory of the Elastic Force of Air – Gas, atoms and the repulsive forces
• Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov – Meditations on the Cause of Heat and Cold – Spin
• Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov – Meditations on the Solidity and Liquidity of Bodies – Anticipating the loom
• Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov – On the Relation of the Amount of Material and Weight – Functions and spin
• Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov – Oration on the Origin of Light. A New Theory of Colour – 01 On light and Light
• Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov – Oration on the Origin of Light. A New Theory of Colour – 02 On transparency
• Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov – Oration on the Origin of Light. A New Theory of Colour – 03 ‘Heat’ is a function of an aggregate
• Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov – Oration on the Origin of Light. A New Theory of Colour – 04 ‘Light’ is a function of an aggregate
• Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov – Oration on the Origin of Light. A New Theory of Colour – 05 ‘Sound’ is a function of an aggregate