Vasily Severgin

[1] Severgin was born in St. Petersburg, the son of a court musician.

In 1789 he was made adjunct chair of mineralogy and began to examine mineral chemistry based on ideas from Lavoisier.

His book on the foundations of mineralogy (1798) was the first Russian text dealing with ideas on chemical analysis and rock formation.

He travelled widely between 1802 and 1804 visiting most of western Russia, the Baltic region, Poland and Finland collecting mineral samples and visiting educational institutions, mines, and factories.

[2] Severgin was the founding editor of the journal Tekhnologicheskii zhurnal begun in 1803.