Henry Farquharson

Farquharson had a profound effect on the intellectual life of Russia, not only by introducing mathematical ideas but by helping to create the first generation of explorers, surveyors, cartographers and astronomers.

After their arrival in Moscow they lived in the house of an English merchant Henry Crevett and tutored a few paying students whilst they waited for the tsar to follow through with his promises of patronage.

[1] In 1715 Peter the Great founded the St Petersburg Naval Academy at Kilkin's House, on the site where the Winter Palace now stands.

Farquharson was appointed senior professor of mathematics and although the academy had a president and director, he was in de facto charge of the institute.

[1] Farquharson was also a talented cartographer, producing a bronze engraving of Mercator's map of America and led the creation of a hydrographic atlas of the Caspian Sea.

By the end of his life, Farquharson had reached the level of brigadier in the Russian table of ranks, a sign of the high respect in which he was held.