history
Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was the Renaissance figure of 18th-century Russia: chemist (he formulated mass conservation independently of Lavoisier), astronomer (he detected Venus's atmosphere during the 1761 transit), poet, grammarian, and reformer of the Russian literary language. Moscow State University bears his name (Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова).
