RUSSIAN officials made a monumental error after erecting a statue of a Scottish scientist by mistake.

Civic leaders in St Petersburg intended to pay tribute to Jean-Francois Thomas de Thomon, a French architect who designed a number of the city’s neo-classical buildings in the 18th and 19th centuries.

However, they have been left red-faced after it emerged the team behind the project depicted the wrong man.

Sculptors who scoured the internet for images of Thomon confused him with Thomas Thomson, a Perthshire-born scientist with no ties to Russia who was regius professor of chemistry at Glasgow University from 1818 to 1852.

The error has been spotted seven years after the installation of the artwork in St Petersburg’s Alexander Park that depicts eight famous architects around a table.

Alexander Taratynov, the project’s chief sculptor, has admitted he used an engraving purporting to be De Thomon from a Wikipedia page, which other sites, including the St Petersburg tourism site, corroborated. The image, however, was of Thomson.

Mr Taratynov said: “I was the project’s main artist and am responsible for everything. Information for the work was taken from internet resources. However, as our diligent people who are interested in history have rightly noticed, there has obviously been a mistake.

“I, as the author, am ready to take away the figure and exchange it for another one. Since nobody has seen Thomas de Thomon, then an invented, composite image could be created, which is also often done.”

He added: “I suggest we turn our attention to the countless means of information, open sources, internet resources, who are spreading erroneous images and information, and ask them why they do this. Often the artist becomes hostage of this.”

The error is thought to have been spotted by a worker at Russia’s Museum of Architecture, who wrote a blog post about it this month.