Nikolai Alekseevich Umov, an outstanding Russian theoretical physicist and philosopher, was a distinguished professor at Moscow University. He was born in 1846 in Simbirsk. In 1857, his family moved to Moscow, where Umov graduated from the 1st Moscow Gymnasium with a gold medal and in 1863 entered the mathematics department of the physics and mathematics faculty at Moscow University. After completing his studies in 1867 with a candidate degree, he worked in the summer at the Williams and Bukhteev carriage factory and in the autumn became a free listener at the St. Petersburg Practical Technological Institute. However, after two months, he left the institute, accepting an offer from Moscow University to improve his scientific knowledge in preparation for a professorship in the physics department. While preparing for his master's exams, Umov began teaching physics at the 2nd Women's Gymnasium and at the Women's Lubyanka Courses.

In 1871, with the support of F. N. Shvedov, Umov was invited to Novorossiysk University, where on November 22 he became an associate professor in the physics department and began lecturing on theoretical physics. In January of the following year, he defended his master's thesis "Theory of Thermomechanical Phenomena in Solid Elastic Bodies" at Moscow University, and in 1874 he defended his doctoral dissertation "Equations of Motion of Energy in Bodies" there as well. From 1875, he became an extraordinary professor, and from 1880, an ordinary professor at Novorossiysk University.

In 1875, Umov solved the problem of the distribution of electric currents on conducting surfaces of arbitrary shape. He experimentally investigated the diffusion of substances in aqueous solutions, the polarization of light in turbid media, and discovered the effect of chromatic depolarization of light falling on a matte surface. In 1893, he returned to Moscow University, where he taught physics to medical students and theoretical physics to mathematics students. After the death of Professor A. G. Stoletov, Umov headed the physics department and began lecturing on experimental physics. Together with P. N. Lebedev, he actively participated in the creation and organization of the Physical Institute at the university. From 1897, he became a Distinguished Professor at Moscow University.

In the early 1900s, Umov revealed the physical meaning of Gauss's formulas in the theory of terrestrial magnetism, for the first time linking the spherical functions of these formulas with the distribution of magnetic masses in the Earth, which explained magnetic anomalies. He introduced important concepts into science, such as the speed and direction of energy movement, energy density at a given point in the medium, and spatial localization of energy flow. However, he did not extend these concepts to other forms of energy besides energy in elastic bodies. In 1884, D. Poynting introduced the concept of electromagnetic energy flow, using a vector to describe the propagation of energy, which in the Russian scientific tradition is called the "Umov-Poynting vector," while in the Western tradition, it is known as the "Poynting vector."

In 1905, Umov established a connection between the albedo of an astronomical object and the degree of polarization of the light reflected from it, which became known as the Umov effect or Umov's law. In 1911, leaving Moscow University in protest against L. A. Kasso's policies, he focused his activities in the Moscow Society of Naturalists, of which he had been president since 1897 until his death. Long before A. Einstein, Umov discussed in his works a formula previously derived by Heinrich Schramm, which, according to his assumption, linked the density of mass and energy of the hypothetical luminiferous ether.

Umov died of a stomach ulcer on January 15, 1915, and was buried at Vagankovo Cemetery.