This article focuses on the trajectories of academic careers and the fate of students, graduates and employees of the Metropolitan University who taught at the Dorpat / Yuriev University in the XIX-early XX centuries. Among them are leading scientists, specialists in various fields of knowledge-astronomers A. N. Savich, N. V. Levitsky, K. D.Pokrovsky, geologists E. K. Hoffman, N. I. Andrusov, F. Yu. Levinson-Lessing, V. V. Bogachev, historians M. A. Diakonov, E. F. shmurlo, I. I. Lappo, E. V. Tarle, lawyers D. D. Grimm, B. V. Nikolsky and many others. Based on published and archived sources, as well as reference publications, the stages of academic career of teachers were reconstructed, and various data related to their collective portrait were analyzed. It was determined representatives of which “generations” of Saint-Petersburg University graduates were most often in the ranks of Dorpat/Yuriev University. The fate of some representatives of the faculty after emigration was traced. It is noted that the imperial legislation governing the teaching service facilitated the outflow of scientific personnel from the capital to the University of Dorpat/Yuriev University and served to Russify it. Argumentative suggestions about the nature of mutual migration of researchers within different spheres of knowledge are presented in this article. There is an evidentiary opinion that Dorpat / Yuriev Universityserved as a kind of “staff reserve” for St. Petersburg/Petrograd University at the turn of XIX - XX centuries and it was a good start of academic career for many St. Petersburg scholars who later returned to the capital of the empire.