The State Geological Museum named after V.I. Vernadsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences is Russia’s oldest center of science, education, culture and knowledge in the field of Earth sciences. The museum is located in the center of Moscow in a historical house built in 1918 under the architect R.I. Klein.
The Museum is headed by its Director, Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, a Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences.
The history of the museum dates back to the “Mineral Office” of the Imperial Moscow University – the first University of Russia founded in 1755 thanks to the efforts of Russia’s outstanding scientist M.V. Lomonosov. The “Mineral Office”, a gift of the Demidov industrialist family, became in 1759 the basis for the very first natural science museum in Moscow, the Museum of Natural History of the Moscow University.
Today, the museum’s collection numbers over 300,000 minerals, rocks and fossils. Throughout 18th to 20th centuries, the exhibits of the museum were amassed by scientists, collectors and patrons. Unique historical collections include those of the Demidov family, Count N. P. Rumyantsev, Count S.G. Stroganov, and the dukes of Gagarin.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries the museum employed outstanding scientists who founded the geological sciences in Russia: Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim, V.O. Kovalevsky, A.P. Pavlov, M.V. Pavlova, V.I. Vernadsky, A.Y. Fersman and many others. During this period the museum became a center of advanced scientific ideas, a mainstay of training and research for entire generations of Russian and foreign geologists and mining industry experts, setting the scene for broad education in the field of natural science.
Today, the museum continues its scientific and educational traditions as an institution of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Research is carried out in multiple fields such as geology, resource extraction and ecology, history of geological sciences. The museum actively holds numerous exhibitions. The museum participates in various federal and international programs and cooperates closely with scientific, educational and public organizations.
Permanent expositions of the museum: Earth’s Geosphere, Geological History of the Earth, World of Minerals, A Creation of Nature in the Hands of an Artisan, A Geological Essay on the Surroundings of
Moscow, Historical Collections, Sergey Mikhailovich Mironov’s Collection, the Geological Kunstkammer.
