Blumentrost L. L. (1692-1755), court physician, first President of the Petersburg Academy of Science

Categories / Science. Education/Personalia
Categories / Medicine. Public Health/Personalia
BLUMENTROST Lavrenty Lavrentievich (1692-1755, St. Petersburg), court physician, first President of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He studied at the Universities of Halle, Oxford, and Leiden and earned the degree of Doctor of Medicine (1713). From 1718 he was the personal physician of Peter the Great and was in the head of the Tsar"s (then the Imperial) Library and the Chamber Of Curiosities. On behalf of Peter the Great he invited scientists from abroad to work in Russia and purchased the anatomic study of Frederik Ruysch in Amsterdam (1717). Together with I.D. Schumacher he was the author of the project of setting up the Petersburg Academy of Sciences, from 1725 he was its first president. From 1727 he lived in Moscow, and retired in 1733. From 1754 he was a curator of the University being created in Moscow; in 1755 he was called to St. Petersburg to discuss problems connected with its opening with the Count I.I. Shuvalov. Blumentrost was buried in the cemetery attached to St. Sampson Cathedral (his tombstone has not survived).

References: Пекарский П. П. История императорской Академии наук в Петербурге. СПб., 1870. Т. 1. С. 1-15.: Тункина И. В. Лаврентий Лаврентьевич Блюментрост//Во главе первенствующего ученого сословия России. Очерки жизни и деятельности президентов Имп. С.-Петербургской Академии Наук. 1725 - 1912. СПб., 2000. С. 13 - 28.

O. N. Ansberg. Blumentrost Lavrenty Lavrentievich
Peter I, Emperor
Schumacher Iogann Yakob
Schumacher Ivan Danilovich
Shuvalov Ivan Ivanovich, Count
Пекарский П. П. История императорской Академии наук в Петербурге. СПб., 1870 Russian Academy of Sciences
Kunstkammer
St. Sampson’s Cathedral