Jacob Bruce

  Jacob Daniel Bruce (Russian: Яков Вилимович Брюс, Yakov Vilimovich Bryus, 1669, Moscow – April 30 1735, manor Glinki near Moscow) was a Russian statesman, military leader and scientist of Scottish descent, one of the associates of Peter the Great. His ancestors had lived in Russia since 1649.

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He participated in the Crimean (1687, 1689) and Azov campaigns (1695–1696) of Peter the Great against the Ottoman Empire during the Russo–Turkish War. During the Great Northern War Bruce was involved in the development of Russian artillery. He was commander of artillery in the Battle of Poltava (1709), for which he was awarded the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called. In 1721 he became one of the first Russian counts.

Jacob Bruce was one of the best educated people in Russia at the time, a naturalist and astronomer. In 1702 he founded the first Russian observatory; it was located in Moscow in the upper story of the Sukharev Tower. Bruce's scientific library of more than 1500 volumes, compiled in the 1730s, became a substantial part of the Russian Academy of Sciences library.

Among Muscovites, Bruce gained fame as an alchemist and magician, due in part to the innovative design of the Sukharev Tower which was very unusual in patriarchal times of 18th-century Moscow. It was rumored that the greatest Black Magic grimoires of his collection had been bricked up into the walls of the Sukharev Tower.