On average, it takes several decades for a university graduate who wants to build a research and teaching career to become a professor. If he turns out to be capable of it at all. However, Grigori Helmersen, the son of a Livonian baron, received the position the year he graduated from the Mining Institute. In the future he was to head his alma mater, become one of the founders of the Russian Geographical Society, an ordinary member of the Academy of Sciences, as well as the initiator and first director of the Geological Committee.
In the funds of the Department of the History of Russian Culture of the State Hermitage there is a green leather folder containing 12 drawings with some of the earliest surviving pictures of the Urals, Zlatoust and Mount Iremel. At the beginning of the XIX century most of the views of Russian cities and localities were connected with scientific expeditions - geographical, ethnographic, geological. The team always included a videopainter, whose tasks included fixing the territories under study. In the Ural Geological Expedition of 1826, Grigory Helmersen, who by a happy coincidence was not only a novice geologist, but also a gifted artist, turned out to be such a person.
His multifaceted education was largely due to the young man's background - he was brought up in the family of the director of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters and the owner of a lithographic workshop that carried out orders from the "Imperial Society for the Encouragement of Arts". Moreover, his grandfather's sister was the wife of a named brother of Catherine I, and the Helmersens were considered related to the Romanovs.
The young man went on the trip as a graduate of the University of Dorpat. He accompanied Professor of Mineralogy Moritz Fedorovich von Engelhardt on his scientific trip to the Saratov, Orenburg and Perm provinces to search for deposits of gold, platinum and diamonds.
After his return, as a geologist and prospector, Grigory Petrovich joined the Ministry of Finance, which at that time was in charge not only of state property, trade relations and various fees, but also of mining affairs. In 1828, as part of one of the expeditions organized by the Ministry of Finance, Helmersen was again sent to the Southern Urals to carry out "geognostic studies and to search for gold in the area from the district of the Miass factory to the Guberlinsky fortress."
Despite the fact that the study of the Ural Mountains was conducted from the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, information about their topography and structure was still very scarce. The young scientist, advancing on horseback, by boat or even on foot, reflected on maps the sources of rivers, indicated the possible origins of river valleys and ridges, measured the height of the mountains over the Caspian Sea, and estimated the mineral wealth.
It is noteworthy that it was Helmersen, together with his colleague Ernst Hoffmann, who became the first professional explorers of Magnitnaya Mountain. "This ore is rich, and mining it is easy," Helmersen wrote in his article "Description of the Southern Urals," published in the 1835 Mining Journal. Already in the Soviet years, one of the largest metallurgical plants in the CIS and Russia was built here.
The following year, in 1829, Hermelsen and Hoffmann were assigned to accompany Alexander Humboldt on his trip to the Southern Urals. The young companions helped the famous German naturalist to save efforts and time during the trip, as they had been studying this region for many years. For themselves, the joint route was an excellent chance to get acquainted with the methods of field research of one of the founders of geography.
Helmersen's formation as a scientist took place almost simultaneously with the development of geology. Grigoriy Petrovich's reports on the results of the expedition seemed to the scientific community to be absolutely new and extremely interesting. They were printed in German and Russian, as was the custom at the time, and were distributed not only in Russia, but also abroad. For example, the orographic scheme of the Southern Urals, composed by him, was relevant throughout the XIX century, and was refined only 100 years later.
The young scientist also received a good review from Humboldt. As encouragement and recognition of his merits, he was sent abroad at government expense for further accumulation of experience. From 1830 to 1832 Helmersen studied at the universities of Berlin, Bonn and Heidelberg, and then visited many fields and specialized enterprises in Germany, Austria and Northern Italy.
Upon his return to Russia in 1834, Grigoriy Petrovich enrolled in the Mining Engineering Corps (now the St. Petersburg Mining University), graduation from which he perceived as a full and logical completion of his mining education. By the time he graduated - in 1838 - the geologist was not just an ordinary "yesterday's student", but a 35-year-old highly qualified mining engineer. This fact explains why the same year he received the post of professor of the geology department at his native university.
But Helmersen's career was just beginning to gain momentum!
Teaching did not prevent him from actively traveling around the country. He toured almost the entire European part of Russia, conducted field studies of the Southern Urals, Kyrgyzstan, part of the Altai Mountains, Lake Peipsi, the geology of Khiva, Bukhara, Kokand, Northwest China. He was the first researcher of iron ores in Moscow suburbs and shale deposits in Estland province. The scientist paid especially much attention to the analysis of coal deposits in the Donbass, in the coal basin near Moscow and in the Urals, being an active promoter of the idea of replacing coal with wood fuel against the background of the appearance of railroads and steamships.
Helmersen's most significant achievement of that period was his 1841 "General Map of Mountain Formations of European Russia" - the first geological map of our country. The scientific community perceived it as "the foundation on which further buildings could be erected", and the Academy of Sciences awarded the author an honorary Demidov Prize.
In later years, the scientist made regular corrections to the map as he updated the information. "Helmersen appealed to all the famous geologists of Russia, asking each of them to provide materials for the extensive work being undertaken," it was stated in the report of the Russian Geographical Society for 1861. And local specialists willingly participated in this large-scale general project, which was to serve as an occasion for new comprehensive profile studies of the country.
In 1863, the final version was published under the title "Geological Map of Russia of the Ural Ridge and the Caucasus." In 1865 Grigory Petrovich was awarded the Konstantinov Gold Medal, the highest award of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Regarding the importance of this work, the famous geographer and traveler Pyotr Semenov-Tyan-Shansky noted that "Helmersen's merits stand resolutely in the first row of merits accomplished in favor of geographical science by our national figures." Today he is rightly called the founder of the Russian school of geological cartography.
Helmersen took part in the establishment and development of the most important domestic organizations in the study of the vast expanses of our country.
In 1844 he was elected an associate professor in the Department of Geodesy and Paleontology at the Imperial Academy of Sciences, in 1847 - Extraordinary and in 1850 - Ordinary Academician. On his account are more than 200 scientific articles and development of instructions for the first expeditions of the Academy of Sciences.
In 1845 Helmersen became one of the founders of the Russian Geographic Society and attended its first meetings, during which the problems of organization, content of the charter and prospects of work were discussed. Later he headed the committee on physical geography of the RGS and the department of physical geography. In addition, he was a member of 34 other Russian and foreign scientific societies and institutions.
In 1865 he was appointed director of the Mining Engineers Corps. It was under his leadership that, in accordance with the decree of Alexander II, the university was transformed from a closed military educational institution into an open civil educational institution and renamed the Mining Institute.
On the day of the 50-year anniversary of the scientific activity of the researcher the Academy of sciences has founded the premium of his name, and he has received a star of Alexander Nevskiy.
Already at the end of his life, discussing the current state of geology in Russia, Helmersen noted that it would be useful to create a central state geological institution. In 1882, the Geological Committee was organized, and its director was "royally appointed" the main initiator of its creation.
However, he did not have the opportunity to watch how it would be engaged in a systematic description of the geological structure and topography of Russia with great success, along with the refinement of maps of these territories. Grigory Petrovich died on February 3, 1885.
