SIR HANS SLOANE AND THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES CHRISTINE G. THOMAS THE year that Sir Hans Sloane became president of the Royal Society marked the beginning of formal Anglo-Russian scientific relations. His predecessor Newton, at his last meeting as president before his death in March 1727, read out a letter received from the newly-founded Russian Academy of Sciences, proposing scientific co-operation between the two institutions.' In the past, the flow of scientific information had been in one direction only. The Russians, especially since the beginning of Peter the Great's programme for modernizing his Empire, had been eager to gain scientific and technical information and expertise from the West. After the founding in 1725 of the Russian Academy of Sciences (fig. i), which provided a centre for the serious scientific study of a country endowed with a wealth of unexplored material in the fields of natural history, geography, mineralogy, and ethnography, the interest ofWestern scientists was aroused, and exchange of information became reciprocal. In the early years at least, this exchange was effected mainly through correspondence between individual scholars rather than through any official exchange of publications. All the founding members of the Academy were foreigners, mostly Germans, and they kept in touch with colleagues they had known before going to Russia. The Sloane Manuscripts contain letters to Sir Hans Sloane from six members of the Russian academy written between 1721 and 1742 (see Appendix A, PP- 33-35 below), and of these correspondents, four had known or at least met him in England. The first to become acquainted with Sloane was Johann Daniel Schumacher (1690-1761) who visited England and the Continent in 1721. A native of Colmar in Alsace, Schumacher had been in Russia since 1714, where he was employed as secretary for foreign correspondence to the imperial physician and as librarian and curator of Peter the Great's collections. At the time of his visit to the West, the idea of creating a learned society or academy in Russia was already in the air, and Schumacher was instructed to cultivate the acquaintance ofWestern scientists, in some cases with the aim of persuading them to work in Russia, in others simply to establish contact and make them aware of the scientific research that was being carried out there (he was to present a newly-engraved map of the Caspian Sea to the learned society of each capital that he visited). He was also instructed to visit public and private museums in order to establish what was lacking in Peter the Great's collections and to report on how they could be enriched. While in 21 < d bC iri I— \^ bc . u O bti t Pe o ^ CI bo o -^ bij '5 ^ o London he attended meetings of the Royal Society and obtained permission to view Sloane's collections, the magnificence of which he remarked on in his official report.^ After his return to Russia he embarked upon a long and successful career at the Academy oi Sciences, enjoying a degree of power disproportionate to his position as secretary and librarian, often to the resentment of the academicians. He was an extremely industrious man who worked hard at surviving and assiduously cultivated useful contacts—Sir Hans Sloane included. The correspondence between Sloane and Schu- macher—four letters from each, written between 1729 and 1751—is not of intrinsic interest, being limited mainly to mutual expressions of goodwill and notes of books being sent, but it is important as a record of some of the publications which were exchanged. When Schumacher visited Paris in 1721 he had invited theastronomer Joseph Nicholas De L'Isle (1688-1768) to work in Russia.^ De L'Isle eventually signed a contract with the Russian Academy in 1726 and remained there until 1747. He set up an observatory which enabled him to establish the latitude and longitude of St Petersburg and, having the vast and largely unsurveyed tracts of the Russian Empire to work on, made an invaluable contribution to science in the fields of astronomy, geography, and cartography. In 1724 De L'Isle had visited London and on that occasion Sloane and Edward Halley were deputed to escort him on a visit to the Greenwich Observatory.-^ Apart from a note written by De L'Isle in 1724 while he was still in London, one letter of 1742 survives in the Sloane collection, in which he thanks Sir Hans for a French thermometer which he has sent to him in Russia.^ A third and more significant visit of a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences occurred in 1730 when the historian Gerhard Friedrich Muller (1705 83), who had been at the Academy since its foundation, was sent to England and the Continent with various commissions. His instructions were similar to those given to Schumacher nine years earlier, though more specific, since the Academy had now been in existence for five years and its needs were well-defined. Muller was to establish links with the book trade in order to facilitate the export of Academy publications and the import of books for its library; he was to seek out high quality engravers and to find out how much their services would cost; he was to prospect both for honorary members for the Academy and for real members who would be willing to go and serve in Russia; he was also to take careful note of everything he saw and to report back to the Academy. The task of recruiting new professors for the Academy was a particularly urgent one, since the contracts of the original employees had just expired. It was also feared that the fact that several employees had left before the end of their contracts would prove a discouragement to others, and Muller had a special instruction, conveyed to him \)rally and secretly', that he should strive in every way to dissipate any evil rumours which might Trighten off others from serving the Academy'. Around the time of Muller's visit the Academy was indeed not an ideal employer. The sudden death of Peter II in 1730 and the struggle for power which preceded Anna's crowning as Empress meant that the Academy received its funding rather irregularly and the salaries of its employees were often not paid on time. The academicians also resented 23 the fact that the president, Blumentrost, had delegated most of the day-to-day running to Schumacher, who also held the purse-strings. Sir Hans Sloane was one of the eleven scientists mentioned by name in Muller's instructions as possible candidates for honorary membership. In Muller's official report he writes about Sloane at greater length and with greater warmth than about any of the other people he met on his journey:*^ Of the learned men whose acquaintance I sought, the most distinguished was Sir Hans Sloane, Baronet, Royal Physician, President of the Royal Society and the Society of Physicians. This most outstanding man showed me every kindness. I presented to him on behalf of the Academy the books and engravings I had brought and said that I had other copies for presentation to the Royal Society. I took the opportunity, when describing, at his request, the organization and state of the Academy, of telling him that the Academy also had foreign honorary members, among which it would consider it a pleasure to include so great a scholar as Mr. Sloane, if Mr. Sloane would agree. Fmally, I asked permission to examine his cabinet of antiquities and natural science and his rich library, of which I had already heard amazing things in Russia. All this was received most graciously by Sir Hans Sloane. He thanked me for the books which I gave him and named a day when I could attend a meeting of the Royal Society—its first after the end of the recess (the 22nd of October) so that I could present the books in person. He assured me that he would consider it a particular honour if the Academy accepted him as an honorary member, showed me his collections and his library, partly with the help of his assistants Mr. Cromwell Mortimer and Dr. Johann Amman ... 1 was there many times, since a lot of time is needed to examine such a wealth of riches. He also invited me to dine with him, and to his country house at Chelsea, and once to the coffee-house at which he and other members of the Royal Society usually meet on Wednesday evenings. All this gave me new opportunities of becoming acquainted with English scholars. In short. Sir Hans Sloane showed me so much kindness that everything that I saw, heard and learned when with him left me with an indelible memory of him. After Muller's departure he w as elected an honorary member of the Royal Society in December 1730.'' He took his honorary membership seriously and in June 1733 he wrote to Sir Hans Sloane giving an account of his recent research for communication to the Royal Society. He presented a manuscript on the Tangut language for publication in the Philosophical Transactions^ and promised to send further material in the future. He writes that he would have continued work on his history of Russia ^if I had not been taken off from it by the Express Commands of our Empress, in order to go on the Expedition to Kamtschatka as a Historiographer: a task which, I must own, agrees perfectly with my Genius that is more inclined to literary travels than any other study'. He says that, in preparation for the journey to Kamchatka ^ .