Monument to Lobachevsky

The bronze bust of Nikolai Lobachevsky adorns the square named after him on Kremlyovskaya Street and remains one of the oldest monuments to a scientist in Russia. The monument was unveiled on 1 September 1896 in honour of the creator of non-Euclidean geometry, who headed Kazan University as rector for nearly two decades.

The idea of commemorating the mathematician arose with Alexander Vasilyev, chairman of the university’s Physics and Mathematics Society, who in the 1880s helped arrange the publication of the complete collection of Lobachevsky’s geometric works. The society obtained the ministry’s permission for an all-Russian fundraising campaign for a prize fund named after the scientist, and at the same time asked permission to install his bust within the university. In the anniversary year of 1893, marking the centenary of Lobachevsky’s birth, it was decided to go further — to name a city street in his honour and to lay out a square for the monument; the city duma approved the initiative in May of that year, and the commission formed to oversee it was headed by duma members together with representatives of the society.

Funds for the monument were donated from across the country: scholarly societies, including the Royal Society of London, educational institutions, and employees of the Moscow-Kazan Railway company. Contributions also came from the heirs of the manufacturer Alafuzov and the merchant Zaitsev, as well as ordinary townspeople. The bust was created by the sculptor Maria Dillon, who had graduated from the Academy of Arts with a gold medal in 1888, while the architectural part was designed by Nikolai Ignatyev; the work cost 3,300 roubles. The sculptor sought to convey a state of deep concentration — a slight tilt of the head, a thoughtful gaze, deep furrows on the brow — drawing on a portrait of Lobachevsky in a high-collared frock coat kept at the university. The pedestal, of polished black granite, is adorned with bronze emblems of geometry — a protractor with compasses and a laurel branch — and an inscription bearing the scientist’s dates of birth and death.

Permission to erect the monument was granted on 18 January 1896, and it was positioned facing the house where Lobachevsky had lived during his years as rector. The opening ceremony was addressed by the project’s initiator, Alexander Vasilyev, and was attended by the mathematician’s daughter Varvara Akhlopkova and his former students, including Senator Bezobrazov. The celebrations continued with sessions of the university’s rectorate and the society, at which greetings from foreign scholarly institutions were read out.

In 1902 a mentally ill townsman broke off part of the bronze wreath, and in the 1930s the applied bronze letters of the original inscription were lost — traces of their mounting are still visible, though some of the decoration was later restored. The republic’s authorities placed the monument under protection as a site of all-Union significance in 1959, and a year later it was included in the list of protected monuments of the RSFSR.

Today the bust in Lobachevsky Square remains part of the familiar scenery by the walls of the university — a monument not only to an outstanding mathematician, but to the Kazan scientific tradition that he shaped for decades to come.