The development of museum complex of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.
The museums of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg initially based their collections on «natural and human curiosities and rarities» of the Kunstkamera, the oldest state museum of Russia established by Peter the Great. Being for a hundred years a universal museum, the Kunstkamera accumulated a vast number of objects and became at the beginning of 19th century a scientific center with several specialized departments. De facto, the Kunstkamera did divide into several independent museums in 1830, de iure, however, the culmination of that process was reflected in the Statute of the Imperial St.-Petersburg Academy of Sciences endorsed by the State Council on March 11th, 1836. During the period from 1836 to the revolutionary 1917 the Museum complex came to include the Zoological, Mineralogical, Botanic, Asian and Ethnographic Museums, it was actively gathering strength, in doing so some museums were modified, new ones were created. The museums of the Academy of Sciences firmly established themselves as the central institutions in their field of knowledge; they played a serious role in the development of the fundamental science and today are regarded as a national treasure.