page_title: Georg Friedrich Parrot
section_title: Imperial University of Dorpat
hierarchical_section_title: Georg Friedrich Parrot / Imperial University of Dorpat
caption_attribution_description: Eesti: "Tartu Ülikooli peahoone" (1832–1835). Litograafia. Kujutise kõrgus 8,9 ja laius 13,3 cm, lehe kõrgus 17,8 ja laius 22,3 cm. This image on crowdsourcing geotagging platform Ajapaik MUIS:TKM TR 4010 G 1240
context_page_description: Georg Friedrich Parrot was a German scientist, the first rector of the Imperial University of Dorpat in what was then the Governorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire.
context_section_description: Due to his extraordinary energy, he became the first rector of the Imperial University of Dorpat (University of Tartu), being elected by the University Council consisting of all chaired professors. In this capacity, Parrot skillfully fought for the academic freedom and the self-government of the university, protecting her from the political pressure of Baltic German barons who had been given the right to autonomously govern in the Baltic provinces. The university was re-opened on the initiative of the local aristocratic establishment but they disliked Parrot for his unconcealed sympathy to the ideals of the Enlightenment. Parrot openly talked about equality of people, irrespective of their social status and heritage. In his inaugural speech at the opening ceremony of the University he said, addressing the students:
  While you are using with a laudatory diligence all that science and art are able to provide for the benefit of your culture, the countryman is working for you on his field; he is devoting his toil for you, working in the hardest conditions all his days, even part of the nights, and because of that he is enforced to fall behind you in his cultural development.  [...] You understand that those who feed you are entitled to much more than merely a miserable existence, that they have every right to expect your gratitude, your respect, our gratitude, our respect.
  According to the memoirs of Parrot's contemporaries, these words made an inextinguishable impression. However, Parrot's hour of triumph arrived on May 22, 1802. Tsar Alexander I stopped in Dorpat on his way to Memel (Klaipėda) for the meeting with the King Frederick William III of Prussia. Parrot was nominated to give a speech in his honour with which he immediately won the sympathy of the young ambitious Tsar. Appealing to the ideal of enlightened monarchy, Parrot expressed his gratitude to the Tsar who had ordered the reopening of the university, and repeated the promise to honestly serve science and the whole humanity. Alexander was so delighted with Parrot's eloquence that he asked him to prepare a written copy of his speech. This episode laid the foundations of a friendly relationship between the Tsar and Parrot, which lasted for ten years and proved to be extremely beneficial for the University, to say nothing about Parrot himself.
  In 1811, Parrot was elected to be a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, becoming a full member in 1826. In the same year, he retired from the University of Dorpat and continued his work as a head of the physics laboratory of the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg.  He died on a trip to Helsingfors (Helsinki), in 1852.
  The Parrot dynasty left an indelible mark on the history of science in Russia and Estonia. His son, Friedrich Parrot (1791-1841), followed in his father's footsteps, making a career as a naturalist and later assuming the rectorship at the University of Dorpat in 1830.  A pioneer of Russian and Estonian scientific mountaineering, he is best known for leading the first expedition to the summit of Mount Ararat in recorded history.
caption: The Imperial University of Dorpat, 1832–1835.
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