Ideas of Lomonosov in Auroral Research

This article describes the achievements of the famous Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov on the basis of a multi-volume edition of his works in Russian and Latin, and comments to these works published by the Academy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 11 volumes. Analysis of Lomonosov's works made from a modern point of view, discusses his discoveries and hypotheses. In the field of atmospheric physics, the most important discovery by Lomonosov, according to the author, was that the aurora is a self-luminescence process of the upper atmosphere, rather than reflected, refracted or scattered light. No direct attention was paid to this discovery in numerous scientific studies before. Lomonosov has interpreted a physical mechanisms of auroras in the Earth's atmosphere based on his numerical experiments and studies. This article compares Lomonosov's work with the work of his contemporaries, eminent scientists from Russia, Europe and USA.