Fedor Fomich Petrushevsky (24.03.1828-17.02.1904) was a Russian physicist. He was born in St Petersburg. He graduated from St Petersburg University (1851) and taught at the gymnasia of St Petersburg and Kiev. In 1862 he began to lecture at St Petersburg University, in 1865—1901 he was head of the department of physics there, and he also taught at other higher educational institutions of St Petersburg.
His work was for the most part in electromagnetism and optics. In 1865 he opened the first physics practical course for students in Russia, which later grew into a large physics laboratory. He was the author of one of the first systematic courses of electromagnetism, “An Experimental and Practical Course of Electricity” (1876). He invented a number of optical instruments.
He was one of the initiators of the founding of the Russian Physical Society and its first chairman (from 1872), and also chairman (1878—1901) of the physics section of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society. He did a great deal to organise a physics laboratory and a physics institute at the university. From 1891 he was one of the two chief editors of the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary. He was the teacher of many Russian physicists.