Mapping Russia: Farquharson, Delisle and the Royal Society (Q2731646)

In the course of the modernizing reforms of Peter the Great in Russia, Henry Farquharson (ca. 1675--1739), a mathematical lecturer at Aberdeen University, was recruited in 1698 to head the Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation, which was instituted in 1701. The Tsar himself visited the Royal Society and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and supplied Farquharson with books and scientific instruments. From 1703 until 1712 Farquharson acted as consultant to Leibniz for Russia and was a correspondent to the Committee for Russia which was appointed by the Royal Society in 1713 including among others Newton and Halley. In 1715 this school, renamed Naval Academy, was relocated to St. Petersburg, with Farquharson as its senior professor. This Academy acted as Russia's first scientific centre. A library containing Russia's earliest known copy of Newton's Principia was moved from Peter's Summer Palace to Naval Academy [\textit{V. S. Kirsanov}, Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 46, No. 2, 203--218 (1992; Zbl 0753.01008)].NEWLINENEWLINEIn 1726, Joseph-Nicolas Delisle (1688--1768) from Paris reached St. Petersburg, as a first professor of astronomy at the Academy of Science, founded by Peter in 1725. He left Russia in 1747 and worked later in the Collège de France.NEWLINENEWLINEIn the present paper, written on the occasion of the tercentenary of the Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation and of the 275th anniversary of Delisle's arrival at St. Petersburg, the work of these two men in Russia is described very thoroughly, based on plentiful sources. Their wide-ranging mapping activity helped to lay the foundations of Russian scientific cartography, their correspondence with the Royal Society kept it well informed about different aspects of mapping in Russia. (The author notices that, nevertheless, a more complete assessment would require the use of material in French and Russian national archives and at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris).