Moscow University (Moskovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet imeni Mikhaila Lomonosova) in its present form (from the 1950s), located on the Sparrow Hills overlooking Moscow's center city.  Photo courtesy Thomas T. Hammond.

Moscow University was founded in 1755, which was rather later by European university standards; some colleges were already even in existence in America by then too.  The driving force behind this accomplishment was Mikhail Lomonosov (1711- 1765), who has frequently been referred to as the "Ben Franklin" of Russia as Lomonosov, like Franklin, dabbled in a wide range of scientific and literary pursuits.

Well, I don't have a photo of Mikhail Lomonosov, but I do have a photo of his grave marker (Well, actually only a part of the monument) in the Aleksandr Nevskii Lavra in St. Petersburg.

If you are up for some punishment, then you can always read my dissertation on the history of Moscow University and the 1840s, "Count Sergei Stroganov and the Development of Moscow University, 1835-1847."  Since the University, throughout its history, was also closely tied to cultural developments in Russia, I included the separate chapters on the university in the weeks of this course devoted to Catherine the Great, Alexander I and Nicholas I. (These are all *.pdf files)

• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Bibliography

Another image of Moscow University, slightly stylized.