for the Kazan Cathedral, the Admiralty, and many other palaces and monuments in St Petersburg, and who had worked closely with Demut-Malinovsky since 1802. Hercules and Antaeus show how Hercules won in a struggle with Antaeus, who had defeated most of his previous opponents up to that point. In 1830 Pimenov fell out of favour with Tsar Nicholas I, seemingly over his sculptures to decorate the Narva Triumphal Arch, built in 1814 to mark the Russian victory over Napoleon, but most probably because of his portraits of the Tsar, which Nicholas did not take a liking to. Pimenov was dismissed by the Tsar and died three years later, at the age of 49. The two sculptures symbolise the earth, its power and wealth – Antaeus’ strength lay in his contact with Mother Earth, and Demut-Malinovsky’s Rape of Proserpina also shows a struggle – and the dynamism of each sculpture contrasts with the solidity of the large portico. Traditions Unusually for a non-military establishment, the university has a uniform worn by all staff and students. When it was first opened in the 1700s, students wore a double-breasted red uniform with a white collar and gold trimmings. The uniform was dropped for a number of years before being reintroduced in 2000 with the aim of reviving the traditions of Russia's first technical college. The Russian railways is another non-military organisation where staff still wear a uniform. In 2013, Russia began issuing new sets of stamps showing uniforms such as those of communications and post office workers, from the 1600s to the present. Russian mining engineers in general wore uniforms, seemingly as part of efforts to bring the profession closer to the military. Science One of the key achievements of the university's scientists has been the invention of techniques to drill through several miles of Antarctic ice to reach the sub-glacial Lake Vostok. Professor Nikolai Vasiliev, head of the drilling department at the university, has led the drilling efforts, while scientific research into the layers of ice that cover the lake, the possibility of new forms of microbial life existing in the lake, and a host of other areas of research connected to the lake are based at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, the All-Russian Research Institute of Geology and Mineral Resources of the World Ocean (VNIIOkeangeologia), the Institute of Geography in Moscow, the Limnological Institute in