Georges Frédéric Parrot and the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences
Georges Frédéric Parrot and the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences

Summary/Abstract: In 1826, the president of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences Sergey Uvarov was happy to succeed in having a prominent scientist and public figure at the Academy. It was Georges Frédéric Parrot (1767–1852), a protagonist of the Enlightenment ideology, a “personal friend” of Alexander I’s, an emeritus professor and the first Rector of the Dorpat University, who was elected at the very beginning of the reign of Nicholas I , on the eve of the centenary of the Academy. Parrot gave nearly 15 years to the Academy of Sciences. Throughout it all, he was a kind of Uvarov’s agent at the University of Dorpat, the one capable not only of estimating the extraordinary abilities of its students but realising their further “profitability” for the Academy. Parrot was by no means an outstanding experimental scientist of his time; he loyally supported basic Enlightenment concepts and tended not only to obtain scientific knowledge, but also to apply it for the benefit of the society. Many essays of Parrot were devoted to the practical use of physics. After moving to St. Petersburg, Parrot focused on management, rather than research. Parrot first settled down to the upgrade of the Academy’s Physics Room, and then he went about the foundation of its new Astronomical Observatory to the pattern of the one of the Dorpat University. Parrot’s resignation from the Academy at the beginning of 1840 was actually forced by the sharp disagreement between Parrot and Uvarov on the issue of the convergence between the Dorpat educational district and the Russian ones.

• Details
• Contents