Golden Names of Russia

In the summer of 1955, three geologists of the Amakinskaya expedition sent a secret radiogram to their superiors: ”We smoked a peace pipe, the tobacco is excellent. Avdeyenko, Elagina, Khabardin”. According to the official version, they are considered the discoverers of one of the largest primary diamond deposits in Russia… But there are still disputes about the authorship of the discovery.

The first higher technical university in Russia was established by a decree of Empress Catherine the Great, following a request with which a mining entrepreneur from the Ural addressed her. But who was the person who established and headed the educational institution? A famous son of a famous father he was.

“The Slavyanov cylinder” in 1893 at the world exhibition in Chicago received a gold medal with the wording: “For the technical revolution produced.” His photographs, accompanying the relevant news, appeared in many newspapers in Europe and the United States. What kind of scientific breakthrough was he talking about?

Under the forge of the Motovilikhinskie Armories lies an iron slab of truly gigantic proportions. A century and a half ago, the 650-ton anvil, as part of the Tsar-Hammer, was recognized as a world treasure at the Vienna Industrial Exhibition. What was the effort behind this casting, unique in the history of metallurgy, and why is the invention resting deep underground today?

The legendary metallurgist Pavel Anosov became world famous as the father of Russian damask steel, when he had managed to reproduce high-quality steel, whose recipe was lost in the Middle Ages. By his research, he also increased the extraction of gold from metal-containing sands by 28 times compared to conventional washing. Why was the scientist suspended from mining then, and the experiments were immediately blocked?

The first exploration well for oil is traditionally attributed to the Americans. They have devoted more than one film to the search for ”black gold”, cementing this stereotype. However, 20 years before the famous Pennsylvania discovery of Edwin Drake, a Russian geologist began to develop a project to extract raw materials by drilling.

The name of this inventor and engineer is associated with the appearance of the first Russian car, firefighting vehicle, trolleybus and omnibus. But what is especially surprising is that then, back in 1900, he demonstrated a super-fashionable vehicle even by today’s standards.

All of St. Petersburg knew the story of the escape from prison of the anarchist theorist Pyotr Kropotkin. People were telling it again and again as an action-packed novel, adding to the story and thinking out the details. One of the participants of the adventure was young Evgraf Fedorov, the man, whose scientific accomplishments in the field of crystallography today are compared with the periodic system of Mendeleyev.

Russian metallurgical companies invest in their modernization on average 200 billion rubles annually. How could a scientist in the 19th century manage to successfully introduce foreign innovations into the industry with a minimum budget?

Exports of Russian coal to Asia-Pacific region will increase 2.5 times: from 100 million tons in 2018 to 252 million tons in 2035. This forecast was recently given by the head of the Ministry of Energy Alexander Novak. However, the growth of production is unthinkable without constant work to improve safety in the quarries and mines.