Kokorev, Vasily Aleksandrovich (1817–1889): noted Russian entrepreneur, columnist, and business adviser. He became rich early in his business career as a wine tax commissioner, performing the instructions of the Ministry of Finance, and by the early 1860s, his worth had grown to 7 million rubles. In 1870, he founded the Volga-Kama Bank and Northern Insurance Company. He built the Ural Railroad. In 1857, he founded the Transcaspian Trading Partnership, and two years later, built an oil-distilling plant on the Absheron Peninsula. In 1862, the refinery’s petroleum products won a silver medal at the London International Exhibition on Industry and Arts. In January 1874, along with entrepreneur Pëtr Gubonin, he created the Baku Oil Company, the world’s first vertically integrated company. His last, unrealized project was a plan to establish a Caspian Commercial Bank to finance the oil industry and develop the Transcaspian Territory. He was a gifted writer and a sharp-tongued columnist, and was given the humorous nickname “Foggy Billion” by the press (from the title of an article in which he advocated the abolition of serfdom). Of his articles, printed mainly in Russky Vestnik [“Russian Herald”] of the 1850s and 1860s and in Russky Arkhiv [“Russian Archive”] of the 1880s, the best known are: “Economic Collapses,” “The Sevastopol Way,” “A Look at European Trade,” “Thoughts on Russian Domestic Trade,” and “Tax Farming.”
Lepëkhin, Academician Ivan Ivanovich (1740–1802): noted Russian traveler and naturalist. From 1760 to 1762, he studied at the university of the Academy of Sciences; from 1762 to 1767, at Strasbourg University, earning a doctorate in medicine. In 1771, he was elected academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. From 1768 to 1772, he supervised an academic expedition to study the Volga region, the Urals, and northern European Russia; in 1773, he completed a trip through the Baltics and Belarus. He became permanent secretary of the Russian academy in 1783, and produced numerous studies in geography, botany, zoology, Russian philology, etc. He expressed innovative ideas regarding the constant changes in the Earth’s surface, the origins of caves, changes in the properties of plants and animals under environmental influences, etc. His principal four-volume work—a description of the 1768–1772 expedition (Travelogue... Through Various Provinces of the Russian State [Dnevnyye zapiski puteshestviya... po raznym provintsiyam Rossiyskogo gosudarstva], 1805)—contains extensive material on Russian geography and ethnography.
Mendeleyev, Dmitry Ivanovich (1834–1907): renowned Russian scholar and encyclopedist, chemist, and developer of the periodic table of the elements. He graduated from the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1855, and in 1863, took up the problem of refining and developed and introduced the technology of acid-base purification of kerosene distillate. In 1865, he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, “On the Combination of Alcohol with Water,” and was soon approved for a position as an associate professor, and then a full professor in the Department of Technical Chemistry at St. Petersburg University. From March 1869 through December 1871, he worked out all the critical aspects of the doctrine of periodicity and set the direction for future research in this area. In late 1871, he turned to research on the physics of gases. From 1880 to 1885, he studied problems of the refining of oil, and proposed a principle for its fractional distillation. In 1888, he advanced the idea of underground gasification of coal, and from 1891 to 1892, he developed a technology for making a new type of smokeless powder. In November 1892, he accepted the government’s offer of a position as head of the Depot of Standard Weights and Measures (the Main Office of Weights and Measures from April 1893), and did much to promote the development of the metric system in Russia. The scope of the public, scientific organizational, and purely research activities in his life is striking. He made three trips to the Absheron Peninsula, where he studied the state of the oil business. On government assignment, he visited the Don Basin, where he studied the causes of a crisis in the coal industry, participated in a review of the customs tariff, published a substantially revised version of his work, Principles of Chemistry [Osnovy khimii], designed an icebreaker for high-latitude scientific research, participated in a Ural Expedition, etc. Dmitry Mendeleyev was a member of over 90 academies of science, scientific societies, and universities in various countries. He is one of the founders of the Russian Chemical Society (1868), and was elected its president several times (1883–1884, 1891, 1892, and 1894). The 101st element in the periodic table, mendelevium, bears his name. In 1962, the USSR Academy of Sciences established the Mendeleyev Prize and Gold Medal for the best work in chemistry and chemical engineering, and in 1964 Dmitry Mendeleyev’s name was entered on the Science Wall of Honor at Bridgeport University in the US, alongside the names of Euclid, Archimedes, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Lavoisier.
Mordvinov, Count Nikolay Semënovich (1754–1845): noted Russian public figure, economist, and admiral. He was sent to England in 1774, where he spent three years improving his knowledge of the naval arts. He participated in the Russian-Turkish War. In 1792, he was appointed Chairman of the Black Sea Admiralty Board, then a member of the Russian Admiralty Board. He was involved in discussions of critical government issues raised by Emperor Alexander and his closest associates, and with the formation of the ministries in 1802, assumed the post of Minister of Naval Forces. In 1806, he was elected head of the Moscow Home Guard. With the institution of the State Council in Russia in 1810, he was appointed a member and chairman of the Department of the State Economy. In 1818, he was appointed chairman of the State Council’s Department of Civil and Spiritual Affairs; he was also a member of the Finance Committee and the Committee of Ministers, and retained these posts during the reign of Emperor Nicholas II. In 1823, he was elected president of the Free Economic Society and held that post until 1840, actively promoting scientific research in the field of economics and finance.
Muromtsev, Sergey Andreyevich (1850–1910): chairman of the first Russian State Duma in 1906 and a professor at Moscow University. He was born into an old aristocratic family and, as a ten-year-old boy, he invented a game of government in which he used sensible management procedures and released his own handwritten newspaper about the life of his father and the surrounding villages. In 1867, he graduated from secondary school with a gold medal and entered the School of Law at Moscow University. After graduating from the university in 1871, he began to prepare for a professorship. He attended lectures at several German universities in 1873 and 1874 to further his education and defended his master’s thesis in 1875 before successfully launching a research and teaching career. He took part in the constitutionalist Zemstvo Movement. In 1880, he became chairman of the Moscow Law Society and an editor of Yuridichesky Vestnik [“Law Herald”]. In 1882, he married Mariya Klimentova (1857–1946), an opera singer and soloist at the Bolshoy Theater. Acting as a writer and public political figure, he sought to protect individuals and society from revolutionary radicalism and the despotism of the authorities. He believed it was necessary to continue the reforms that would lead Russia to a constitutional system in a peaceful and evolutionary way. From 1904 to 1906, he became a recognized authority in constitutional and parliamentary law and began promoting the experience of Western parliaments. He was one of the founders of the Constitutional Democratic Party and a member of its Central Committee. He drafted the Russian Basic Law. Muromtsev was elected to the first State Duma as a deputy from Moscow. Following the Duma’s dissolution, he led a session of some Duma deputies in Vyborg. A court sentenced him to three months in prison for signing the Vyborg Appeal on July 10, 1906. Upon release from prison, he continued his research and lectured at Moscow University. The entire progressive community of Moscow turned out for his funeral in early October 1910. Russkiye vedomosti [“Russian Gazette”] wrote: “In life, Professor Muromtsev was a historic personality for all Russians and all Europeans because Russia’s constitutional history starts with his name.”