Vasily Mikhailovich Severgin (; 19 September 1765 – 29 November 1826) was a
Russian
Russian(s) may refer to:
*Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*A citizen of Russia
*Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages
*''The Russians'', a b ...
academician
An academician is a full member of an artistic, literary, engineering, or scientific academy. In many countries, it is an honorific title used to denote a full member of an academy that has a strong influence on national scientific life.
Accor ...
,
chemist
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...
,
mineralogist
Mineralogy is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical mineralogy, optical) properties of minerals and mineralized artifact (archaeology), artifacts. Specific s ...
, and
geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the structure, composition, and History of Earth, history of Earth. Geologists incorporate techniques from physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and geography to perform research in the Field research, ...
. For three decades, he was the only academician elected to the
Geological Society of London
The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe, with more than 12,000 Fellows.
Fe ...
. He has been described as being among the most influential pioneers of
geology
Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...
in Russia.
Biography
Severgin was born in
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...
, the son of a court musician. He studied at the Gymnasium of the St. Petersburg Academy (1776) of Sciences and then went to the university in 1784 to study mineralogy. He then completed his studies at the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...
(1789) after studying basalts in the region. He trained under J.F. Gmelin. He examined the contemporary dispute between the neptunists and plutonists. In 1789 he returned to present papers on basalt and argued against the neptunists, suggesting that basalts formed from molten liquid. In 1789 he was made adjunct chair of mineralogy and began to examine mineral chemistry based on ideas from
Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794), CNRS (
Kirwan's ''Elements of Mineralogy'' (1791). His book on the foundations of mineralogy (1798) was the first Russian text dealing with ideas on chemical analysis and rock formation. He travelled widely between 1802 and 1804 visiting most of western Russia, the Baltic region, Poland and Finland collecting mineral samples and visiting educational institutions, mines, and factories. Severgin was the founding editor of the journal Tekhnologicheskii zhurnal begun in 1803. He edited it until his death in 1826.