On the 3rd of September 2021, the hereditary knyaz Nikita Dmitrievich Lobanov-Rostovsky was welcomed into the National Museum of Natural History with BAS by Prof. Pavel Stoev, museum director. The subject of their meeting was the filming of a documentary film about his life, set to be released in 2022.
Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky was born on the 6th of January 1935 in Sofia. He left the country in 1953 and currently lives in London. A well-known patron of the arts and mineralogist, as well as member of the Governing Council of St. Cyril and St. Methodius International Foundation, he continues to have a deep interest in the country of his birth.
He is a long-standing contributor to the museum and has enriched its scientific collections of minerals with samples of hematite, decorative objects made of onyx-marble, serpentinite, and other decorative mineral varieties. A particular value to the museum exposition is his 2014 donation, a piece of Martian meteorite which placed the National Museum of Natural History-BAS among the few museums worldwide to possess exhibits both from the Moon and from Mars. As a symbol of gratitude for his donations and in connection with the 125th anniversary of this institution, the management of the Balkan Peninsula’s biggest natural history museum has awarded him with an honorary diploma and plaque.
With his financial support, a partial reconstruction and modernisation of the Genesis hall of the museum’s mineralogy exposition was conducted in 2018. In this hall hangs a portrait of the founder of contemporary geology Sir Charles Lyell, also a donation from Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky. Minutes before the official reopening of the refurbished Genesis hall, the famous philantrope was gifted the Sign of Distinction of the President of BAS by Acad. Julian Revalski.