Academy of good hopes

The history of the creation of the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences still gives rise to the most contradictory assessments - from admiring to sharply negative ones. In many respects, the adventurous project of Peter I on the opening of a higher scientist in a massively illiterate country alone interprets as a brilliant innovation, which laid the foundation for the formation of Russian science, others as a destructive rejection of cultural identity. The authors of the book - famous historians of science - talk about the creation of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and the first seven decades of its existence. The main emphasis is on the analysis of complex relations between scientists and the bureaucracy - both intracademic and state. Particular attention is paid to the assessment of the activities of M.V. Lomonosov. I.S. Dmitriev-Doctor of Chemical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Philosophy and Technology of the Philosophy Faculty of St. Petersburg State University, Director of the Museum-Archive D.I. Mendeleev SPbSU. N.I. Kuznetsova is a doctor of philosophical sciences, a specialist in the field of philosophy and methodology of science, social history of science, philosophical ethics, professor at the Department of Modern Problems of the Philosophy of the Russian State University