No. 4, 2009

The Vernadsky State Geological Museum: a great place for learning about the Earth sciences

The imprint from the five billion years of our planet's history is clearly visible in the unique collections of mineral ores and fossil organisms gathered in the Vernadsky State Geological Museum, one of the oldest science museums in the city of Moscow.

A geological odditorium

The appearance of the first exhibits from the collection of the Russian Academy of Sciences' future Vernadsky State Geological Museum was closely associated with the birth of Russia's first institution of higher education, Moscow State University. The university was founded by an Imperial Decree dated January 12, 1755, and as early as February 17, the brothers Prokofy, Grigory, and Nikita Demidov, sons of a factory owner in the Urals, contributed the first specimens to the new museum's collection. The collection of 6,000 mineral and ore samples was put on display in the library of the Apothecary House, located on Red Square on the site of today's State Museum of History.

The Apothecary House was home to the medical faculty of the Imperial University, at which all disciplines of natural science were studied. It also contained a Department of Natural History.

Thanks to contributions from a great many patrons (among whom was the Russian Emperor Alexander I), the collection grew rapidly and became the centerpiece of the nation's first Museum of Natural History, which opened as early as 1791.

Unfortunately, a great many of the first exhibits were destroyed in Moscow's Great Fire of 1812, during Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

In December 1814, the Museum of Natural History was reopened in a new building on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street. The museum grew quickly and became one of Europe's leading museums, performing the progressive functions of education and enlightenment.

The second half of the 19th century was marked by the rapid development of the natural sciences. The museum was home to outstanding scholars, such as  Vladimir Vernadsky, who was a natural scientist of the broadest possible profile. Through their efforts, the museum became not just a major academic center, but a scientific center as well.

At the same time, the museum was being transformed into a unique archive of material, holding already acquired collections for future study and sometimes even disappearing geological items.

Preserved in the museum's collections are samples taken at deposits that were already mined out a century ago. Interesting samples of rocks, minerals, ores, and fossils from every continent in the world are gradually being accumulated.

The museum's new mission

The first half of the 20th century was known for the rapid development of technical progress - a technical revolution that required the exploitation of vast quantities of raw materials. The new age and new demands were reflected in the museum as well. In 1930, the Moscow State University Department of Geology and the Moscow Mining Academy would use the museum as a base in organizing a new geological survey institute.

The museum was at that time focused on teaching, and public interest and scientific research were of secondary importance. The unique collections were put away and were no longer available for active use outside the educational process. There was no room, no staff, and no funds for anything else.

A new period in the museum's development began in 1988, when a government resolution to reestablish a dedicated state geological museum was adopted. At the same time, the museum was given the name of Vladimir Vernadsky as a symbol of the integrated approach to the natural processes that unite all things animate and inanimate flourishing in our planet's biosphere.

The museum's exhibits are now constantly being updated. A new exhibit has just been opened on combustible minerals (coal, oil, gas), items never before featured at the museum even though it has unique samples of coal and combustible shales that were collected in the 20th century.

The halls of the museum contain samples of the Earth's core and mantle, and the geological role and interaction of the planet's sheaths are revealed. The exposition makes clear the essence of Vernadsky's concept. Rich paleontological collections give some idea of the development of the planet's plant and animal world in the past. The museum collects, stores, studies, and displays in its exhibits documentary materials on problems of ecology and the noosphere.

In the period since 1945 alone, more than 1000 people have donated samples of minerals to the museum: students, instructors, and graduates of MSU and the Geological Survey Institute. The museum's meter-tall phlogopite crystal, found in 1929 at Slyudyanka, is the largest of its kind in Russia. An enormous prismatic crystal of apatite (more than 60 cm long) was recovered from the same deposit. Another three samples are outstanding in their dimensions: a 500 kg slab of drift copper from Kazakhstan; a block of Urals malachite weighing 200 kg, mounted on a special plinth donated by one of the Demidovs; and, finally, a gigantic core sample of rock salt from the Donbass, 1.2 meters tall with a diameter of 80 cm.

Along with minerals found in nature, the museum has collections of quite beautiful unique "technogenic stones" such as tengisites. These are products from the melting of sedimentary rocks by an oil well fire in the village of Tengiz in 1990. Kazakhstan's Tengiz oilfield, along with the Samotlor and Romashkino oil fields, is one of the three largest oil fields ever discovered on the territory of the former Soviet Union. LUKOIL is, incidentally, now operating  on the Tengiz oil field, which is one of the world's top five oil fields in terms of volumes of known reserves.

Today, the mineralogical collection at the Vernadsky State Geological Museum is home to almost 60,000 exhibits featuring more than 1,100 kinds of minerals. Minerals and ores from more than 5,000 deposits are assembled in the museum's collections.

The museum staff is active in scientific and educational efforts to popularize science and promote environmental protection.  It regularly holds interesting and informative exhibitions on science and the arts. In working to maintain the great traditions of the past, the museum relies on Vladimir Vernadsky's concepts of the unity of everything animate and inanimate found on the planet, its connection with the Cosmos, and the role of man as a geological force that alters the face of the Earth.