was founded in 1755 through an initiative by Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765).
The order on establishment of the university was issued by Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, in 1755 on St Tatyana Day, January 25 (January 12, according to the old calendar), the date which has become a student holiday in Moscow and throughout Russia.
Unlike similar institutions in Europe of those days, Moscow University had no divinity school and offered lecture courses primarily in Russian, rather than Latin.
On occasion of the university’s 185th anniversary in 1940, it was named after Lomonosov.
Today, Lomonosov Moscow State University consists of 15 research and development institutes, 40 departments and over 300 chairs. The university currently has 33 thousand undergraduates, over four thousand post graduate students, about five thousand professors and lecturers, and over four thousand researchers.
In the two and a half centuries of its existence, Lomonosov Moscow State University has trained over 300 thousand graduates currently working in Russia and in over 150 countries around the world.
Detailed information on MSU is available at its official website at http://www.msu.ru/en/