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Russian Princess Stands With Benjamin Franklin as Comrade of the Enlightenment 

PHILADELPHIA — You would not expect to find someone sharing star billing with Benjamin Franklin in this city, especially during the 300th anniversary of his birth.

Sue Ann Prince curated an exhibit about the two.

But while everywhere else in town Franklin is being lionized as the printer, scientist and statesman, an exhibition at the American Philosophical Society, which he founded, pairs him with an unlikely contemporary, Ekaterina Dashkova, a Russian princess whom few Americans have ever heard of.

A noblewoman who married a prince, a teenage mother and a friend of a monarch, Princess Dashkova seemed to have nothing in common with Franklin, an elderly self-made man of the New World and enemy of George III. Yet both were vivid personalities and exemplars of the Enlightenment.

If one of Franklin’s many achievements was the creation of America’s first learned society, Dashkova’s foremost distinction was to be the first woman in the world to head a national academy of sciences. It is a rarity to this day.

The princess took over directorship of the decrepit Imperial Academy of Sciences in Russia and, though not a scientist herself, restored it to prominence and intellectual respectability. This came at a critical time in the history of science, its transformation from what was called natural philosophy, often practiced by gifted amateurs, to a professional enterprise.

The two met only once, in Paris in 1781, when Franklin was 75 and Dashkova 37. Nothing of what they talked about is recorded, said Sue Ann Prince, the exhibition curator, “but my guess is they had a good time together.”

Franklin enjoyed the company of intelligent women, and the two evidently left impressed with each other. Franklin soon wrote, inviting her to become the first woman to join the Philosophical Society, and the only one to be so honored for another 80 years. Later, Dashkova reciprocated by making him the first American member of the Russian Academy.

The correspondence between them is a highlight of the modest but engaging exhibition, “The Princess and the Patriot: Ekaterina Dashkova, Benjamin Franklin and the Age of Enlightenment,” which opened last month and is to run the rest of the year.

Just some historical perspective:
1773. Boston Tea Party: English tea is thrown into the harbor to protest a tax on tea.

1775. American Revolution
Fighting at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, marks the beginning of the American Revolution.

1776. The Declaration of Independence is approved July 4 by the Continental Congress (made up of representatives from the American colonies).

Declaration of Independence
Portion of The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

1781. British General Cornwallis surrenders to the Americans at Yorktown, Virginia, ending the fighting in the Revolutionary War.

The Scientific Revolution (1550-1700)

The Enlightenment (1650–1800)

French Revolution (1789–1799)

Napoleonic Europe (1799-1815)