Yakov Vilimovich Bruce
(1670-1735)

Yakov Vilimovich Bruce hailed from a noble Scottish family. His father (according to some historians, his grandfather), had immigrated to Russia in Cromwell's time. Born in 1670, Y.V. Bruce received an excellent education, and displayed a penchant for mathematics very early. Together with his brother Roman, Yakov joined the would-be emperor Peter's 'Mock Army,' and took part in a series of very real - but unsuccessful - military campaigns against Turkey. In 1699, he joined Peter on his trip to the Trinity & Sergius Lavra, where the Tsar fled from a web of intrigues spun by his sister Sophia. From then on, Bruce became Peter's steady companion in all his campaigns and travels, and an active participant of all major events of Peter's era. He accompanied Peter on his 'Great Embassy' to Europe in 1698. Staying with the Tsar in England, he attended lectures by English mathematicians and frequented the London Observatory.

Bruce's forte was astronomy, which he studied all his life, but his scope of interests was very wide. Describing Bruce's encyclopaedic knowledge, his biographer M.D. Khmyrov wrote: "An astronomer, a mathematician, an artilleryman, an engineer, a botanist, a mineral scientist, a student of the spheres, a geographer, a published author and translator of many a scholarly treatise, Bruce was, without a doubt, the most educated of all Peter's associates, and one of the pioneers of Russian education."

Bruce left government service soon after Peter's death, choosing not to take part in the fierce power struggle that plagued a succession of subsequent reigns, starting from Catherine I. His retirement was officially announced the 6th of July 1726. Bruce devoted the last 9 years of his life exclusively to science.

Yakov Bruce is also known as the author of a calendar he published in 1709 in collaboration with Vassily Kipriyanov. Although he never published calendars again, he compiled many of them for publication in later years, emulating German calendars. Bruce can be considered the pioneer of calendar publishing in Russia. The scientist left a library and Russia's only collection of curios behind. He bequeathed everything to the Academy of Sciences' Kunstkammer.