Brief survey of the achievements of prominent scientists and technicians from early modern to Soviet time, such as polymath Mikhail Lomonosov, inventor Ivan Kulibin, pioneer of rocket scinece Nikolai Kibalchich, rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovskii, botanists Kliment Timiriazev and Ivan Michurin, chemist Dmitrii Mendeleev, the chief of Russian Electrification Commission Gleb Krzhizhanovskii, physicist Abram Ioffe, physicist Piotr Kapitsa, mineralogist and geochemist Vladimir Vernadskii, chemist, inventor of the polybutadiene synthetic rubber Sergei Lebedev, inventor of the first effective filtering activated charcoal gas mask Nikolai Zelinskii, a founding father of modern aero and hydrodynamics Nikolai Zhukovskii, aircraft engineer Andrei Tupolev, the explorer of the Arctics Otto Shmidt, nuclear physicists Igor Kurchatov and Anatolii Aleksandrov, mathematician Mstislav Keldysh, and rocket engineer Sergei Korolev.