You can't say more about him than Pushkin:

One day an academic, the next a hero,

Or a sailor, or a carpenter,

He was an all-embracing soul

He was an eternal worker on the throne.

His merits to the Russian science include raising, as we would say now, the prestige of education, the organization of many educational institutions, from number schools to the Naval Academy, the creation of new printing houses, which made books available to the masses, the opening of the first Russian museum – the Kunstkamera, so on and so forth. Cutting a window to Europe was a useful phenomenon for development of scientific thought: it helped to establish strong scientific contacts with European countries and allowed to begin inviting foreign scientists to work for the sake of our homeland. Peter wanted to establish the Academy of Sciences, but his time ran out first: in accordance with the statutes he had approved, the Academy of Sciences would be opened by his wife, Catherine I.