2 Roubles M.V. Lomonosov

This piece belongs to Russia's long-running "Outstanding Personalities of Russia" series, issued annually since 1993. Lomonosov's inclusion is unremarkable in one sense — he appears on currency and commemoratives with some regularity — but the 2011 date marks the 300th anniversary of his birth, which drove the issuance rather than the series calendar alone. A polymath who founded Moscow State University in 1755 and made foundational contributions to chemistry, optics, and linguistics, Lomonosov spent much of his career navigating the German-dominated Imperial Academy of Sciences, where his Russian nationality was a persistent institutional liability.