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The Russian/St Petersburg Academy of Sciences

Founded in 1724

The Academy project was presented in January 1724 when the organizational basis of the Academy, guarantees for its material existence, candidacy and election procedures were laid down.

Krzemie'nska writes in [7]:-
The opening ceremony was held 27 December 1725, and it is stressed that from its very beginning the Academy was a working scientific institution, which represented a good basis for further development of science in Russia.
The form of the Academy was imported ready-made from the Berlin model proposed to Peter the Great by Leibniz several years earlier.

In [3] Gordin:-
... argues that Peter took Leibniz's academic structure and used it as the apex of both his educational projects and new manners reforms designed to transform Russia into a 'Western' state. This view of the Academy is explored to shed light on Russian natural philosophical publications, scientific disputes in the early Academy, and the issue of the 'Enlightenment' in Russia.
The Academy started as the The Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences and was based in St Petersburg. The name varied over the years, becoming The Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts 1747-1803), The Imperial Academy of Sciences (1803- 1836), and finally, The Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (from 1836 and until the end of the empire in 1917). Following the Revolution in 1917 it was renamed the Russian Academy of Sciences. It kept this name only until 1925 when it became the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1934 it moved from Leningrad (which is what St Petersburg had been renamed) to Moscow. In 1991 its name of the Russian Academy of Sciences was reinstated.

Some important changes to its status were made in 2013.
Visit the society website.

References (show)

  1. A A Borovkov and Yu G Reshetnyak, On the 275th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russian), Mat. Tr. 2 (1) (1999), 3-7.
  2. A A Borovkov and Yu G Reshetnyak, The 275th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russian), Sibirsk. Mat. Zh. 40 (5) (1999), 973-976.
  3. M D Gordin, The importation of being earnest : the early St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Isis 91 (1) (2000), 1-31.
  4. A T Grigoryan, The anniversary of the foundation of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Organon. 11 (1975), 107-114.
  5. A T Grigoryan and N I Nevskaya, J H Lambert and the Petersburg Academy of Sciences (Russian), Istor.-Mat. Issled. No. 25 (1980), 218-224; 379.
  6. Yu Kh Kopelevich, Euler - member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, active and honored (Russian), in Development of the ideas of Leonhard Euler and modern science (Russian) (Moscow, 1988), 47-59.
  7. B Krzemie'nska, The founding of the Academy of Sciences and Arts in St Petersburg in 1724-1725 (some remarks on the 250th anniversary of the Academy of Sciences in the USSR) (Czech), DVT - Dejiny Ved. a Techniky 7 (1974), 131-147.
  8. G K Mikhailov, On the 275th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russian), Prikl. Mat. Mekh. 63 (4) (1999), 531-537.
  9. G K Mikhailov, On the 275th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences, J. Appl. Math. Mech. 63 (4) (1999), 511-516.
  10. A N Shiryaev, On the history of the founding of the Russian Academy of Sciences and on the first publications on probability theory in Russian editions (Russian), Teor. Veroyatnost. i Primenen. 44 (2) (1999), 241-248.
  11. A N Shiryaev, On the history of the founding of the Russian Academy of Sciences and on the first publications on probability theory in Russian editions, Theory Probab. Appl. 44 (2) (2000), 225-230.
Last Updated August 2013