Earth's Physics Department is one of the eldest departments of St. Petersburg University. It was founded in 1923, and since then the educational and scientific research staff of the department have converged to a unique scientific school of global geophysics. The scientific and pedagogical principles were elaborated by the leading geophysicists of the USSR — by professors P.N. Tverskoy, P.M. Nikiforov, V.B. Bursian, N.V. Rose and by the author of world–famous handbook "Earth Magnetism" B.M. Yanovsky, who was the head of the department for many years.
From the very first years of the department activities as an educational–scientific centre of geophysics in Russia, the bringing up the specialists (students and post–graduate students) as well as scientific research were based on complex investigations of Earth as a planet, including all its spheres: internal — from the Earth's core and external till outer spheres of the Sun. These investigations are fulfilled with the whole spectrum of geophysical methods: seismic, electric, magnetic, gravitational and electromagnetic. Our department gave birth to such branches of geophysics as paleomagnetism, magnetotelluric research, physics of Earth-Sun interactions, dynamic theory of seismic waves propagation in Earth, statistical methods of reverse geophysical problems solution. One of the major features of global geophysics school, which exists for more than forty years, is the idea, which now became a tradition, of constant scientific collaboration scientists of different specialities within the department and also with the colleagues from Russia and abroad.