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Alexander Zemtsov

Alexander von Humboldt’s ideas
on volcanism and their influence on Russian scientists

Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow

2. Some features of the time of Humboldt’s travels to Russia (1829)

A. v. Humboldt visited Russia while the first Russian University Charter was in power (adopted in 1804). The Charter introduced the autonomy of the universities and proclaimed the Council of Professors as the highest authority at a university. The charter was in action until 1835, when the universities became subordinated to administrative heads of regional governmental education departments.

In 1823, only a few years before A. v. Humboldt traveled to Russia, the German born Count Georg Cancrin (Egor Kankrin) (1774-1845) had been appointed Russian minister of finances. It is known that Cancrin supported the exploration of precious metals in Russia, and in 1826 he granted official permission for commercial gold mining to several merchants.[1] Cancrin supported Maurice Engelhardt’s (1779-1842) expedition to the Ural mountains in 1826, during which the first Russian diamonds were discovered.

In 1807, the Mining department of the Russian Government had been established. In 1813, after a young girl by the name of Katerina Bogdanova had found a gold nugget and shown it to her parents (see Humboldt’s “Central Asia,” Russian edition, 1915, p. 230), the mining of gold started in the Ural mountains. The first platinum was found in 1823 in the Ural region by V. Lubarskiy (according to Humboldt, and in 1819 according to the Chemical Elements Popular Encyclopedia, 1973, p. 180). In 1828, 1.5 tons of platinum were mined in Russia, and in 1843, 3.5 tons (cf. Chemical Elements Popular Encyclopedia, 1973, p. 181-182).

In 1826, powder technology experiments with platinum were successfully completed. They made the coining of platinum in Russia possible. It started in 1828 and lasted until 1845, also with the support of finance minister Cancrin. The price of platinum was set to be only 3.8 times as high as that of silver.

The first successes in the mining of precious metals in Russia correspond in time with the first issue of the “Mining Journal” in 1825.

In 1829, several expeditions to volcanic regions were organized in Russia: Friedrich Parrot’s (1791-1841) expedition to Mt. Ararat, Adolf Kupffer’s expedition to Mt. Elbrus mountain and Adolf  Erman’s travel to Kamtchatka, to measure magnetic field intensity in Russia’s wide open spaces.

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[1] Encyclopedia, F. Brockhaus, I. Efron (editors), half-volume 24 (1894), p. 655 (in Russian).

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