Russian scientists pushed aside the veil of the unknown, making their contribution to the evolution of scientific thought throughout the world. Many have worked abroad in research institutions with a worldwide reputation. Our fellow countrymen have collaborated with many outstanding scientific minds. The discoveries became a catalyst for the development of technology and knowledge throughout the world, and many revolutionary ideas and discoveries in the world were created on the basis of the scientific achievements of famous Russian scientists.
The worlds in the field of chemistry have glorified our compatriots for centuries. made the most important discovery for the world of chemistry - he described the periodic law chemical elements... Over time, the periodic table has received worldwide recognition and is now used in all corners of our planet.
Sikorsky can be called great in aviation. The aircraft designer Sikorsky is known for his developments in the creation of multi-engine aircraft. It was he who created the first aircraft in the world with technical characteristics for vertical take-off and landing - a helicopter.
Not only Russian scientists contributed to aviation. For example, the pilot Nesterov is considered the founder of aerobatics, moreover, he was the first to propose the use of runway lighting during night flights.
Famous Russian scientists were also in medicine: Pirogov, Mechnikov and others. Mechnikov developed the doctrine of phagocytosis (protective factors of the body). Surgeon Pirogov was the first to use anesthesia in the field for the treatment of a patient and developed classical means of surgical treatment, which are used to this day. And the contribution of the Russian scientist Botkin was that he was the first in Russia to conduct research on experimental therapy and pharmacology.
On the example of these three areas of science, we see that the discoveries of Russian scientists are used in all spheres of life. But this is only a small fraction of everything that was discovered by Russian scientists. Our compatriots have glorified their outstanding homeland in absolutely all scientific disciplines, from medicine and biology to developments in space technology. Russian scientists left for us, their descendants, a huge treasure of scientific knowledge in order to provide us with colossal material for creating new great discoveries.
Alexander Ivanovich Oparin is a famous Russian biochemist, author of the materialist theory of the appearance of life on Earth.
Academician, Hero of Socialist Labor, Lenin Prize laureate.
Childhood and youth
Curiosity, inquisitiveness and a desire to understand how a tiny seed can grow, for example, a huge tree, manifested itself in the boy very early. Already in childhood, he was very interested in biology. He studied plant life not only from books, but also in practice.
The Oparin family moved from Uglich to a country house in the village of Kokaevo. The very first years of childhood passed there.
Yuri Kondratyuk (Alexander Ignatievich Shargei), one of the outstanding theorists of space flight.
In the 60s, he became world famous for the scientific justification of the way of flying. spaceships to the moon.
The trajectory calculated by him was named "Kondratyuk's track". It was used by the American Apollo spacecraft to land a man on the lunar surface.
Childhood and youth
This one of the outstanding founders of astronautics was born in Poltava on June 9 (21), 1897. He spent his childhood in his grandmother's house. She was a midwife, and her husband was a zemstvo doctor and government official.
For some time he lived with his father in St. Petersburg, where from 1903 he studied at the gymnasium on Vasilievsky Island. When his father died in 1910, the boy returned to his grandmother.
The inventor of the telegraph. The name of the inventor of the telegraph is forever inscribed in history, since Schilling's invention allowed information to be transmitted over long distances.
The device made it possible to use radio and electrical signals going through the wires. The need to transmit information has always existed, but in the 18-19 centuries. in the context of growing urbanization and technological development, data exchange has become relevant.
This problem was solved by the telegraph, the term from the ancient Greek language was translated as "writing far away."
Emily Christianovich Lenz is a famous Russian scientist.
From school, we are all familiar with the Joule-Lenz law, which states that the amount of heat released by the current in a conductor is proportional to the current strength and the resistance of the conductor.
Another well-known law is the "Lenz rule", according to which the induction current always moves in the direction opposite to the action that generated it.
early years
The original name of the scientist is Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz. He was born in Dorpat (Tartu) and was a Baltic German by birth.
His brother Robert Christianovich became a famous orientalist, and his son, also Robert, followed in his father's footsteps and became a physicist.
Trediakovsky Vasily is a man with a tragic fate. So it was fate that in Russia at the same time lived two nuggets - and Trediakovsky, but one will be treated kindly and will remain in the memory of descendants, and the second will die in poverty, forgotten by everyone.
From schoolboy to philologist
In 1703, on March 5, Vasily Trediakovsky was born. He grew up in Astrakhan in a poor family of a clergyman. A 19-year-old boy went to Moscow on foot to continue his studies at the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy.
But he stayed in it for a short time (2 years) and without regret left to replenish the baggage of knowledge in Holland, and then to France - to the Sorbonne, where suffering need and hunger, he studied for 3 years.
Here he participated in public debates, comprehended mathematical and philosophical sciences, was a student of theology, studied French and Italian languages \u200b\u200babroad.
"Father of Satan", academician Yangel Mikhail Kuzmich, was born on 10/25/1911 in the village. Zyryanov, Irkutsk region, came from a family of descendants of settlers-convicts. At the end of the 6th grade (1926), Mikhail leaves for Moscow - to his older brother Konstantin, who studied there. When he was in the 7th grade, he did a part-time job, delivers stacks of newspapers - orders from the printing house. After graduating from FZU, he worked in a factory and at the same time studied at a workers' faculty.
MAI student. Start of a professional career
In 1931, he enters to study at the Moscow Aviation Institute - specializing in aircraft construction, and ends it in 1937. While still a student, Mikhail Yangel gets a job at the Polikarpov Design Bureau, later, his scientific advisor for the defense of the diploma project: "High-altitude fighter with a pressurized cockpit." Having started his work at the Polikarpov Design Bureau as a designer of the 2nd category, ten years later M.K. Yangel was already a leading engineer, engaged in the development of projects for new modifications of fighters.
02/13/1938, M.K. Yangel, as part of a group of Soviet specialists in the field of aircraft engineering of the USSR, visits the United States for the purpose of a business trip. It is worth noting that the 30s of the twentieth century is a rather active period in cooperation between the USSR and the USA and not only in the field of mechanical engineering and aircraft construction, in particular, small arms were purchased (in rather limited quantities) - Thompson submachine guns and Colt pistols.
Scientist, founder of the theory of helicopter engineering, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor Mikhail Leontyevich Mil, winner of the Lenin and State Prizes, Hero of Socialist Labor.
Childhood, study, youth
Mikhail Leontiev was born on November 22, 1909, in the family of a railway employee and a dentist. Before settling in the city of Irkutsk, his father, Leonty Samuilovich, searched for gold for 20 years, working in the mines. His grandfather, Samuel Mil, settled in Siberia at the end of his 25-year naval service. From childhood, Mikhail showed versatile talents: he loved to draw, was fond of music and easily mastered foreign languages, studied in the aircraft modeling circle. At the age of ten, he participated in the Siberian aircraft modeling competition, where, after passing the stage, Mishina's model was sent to the city of Novosibirsk, where she received one of the prizes.
Mikhail graduated from elementary school in Irkutsk, upon completion of which in 1925, he entered the Siberian Technological Institute.
A.A. Ukhtomsky is an outstanding physiologist, scientist, researcher of muscle and nervous systems, as well as sense organs, Lenin Prize laureate and member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Childhood. Education
The birth of Aleksey Alekseevich Ukhtomsky took place on 13 (25) .06.1875 in the small town of Rybinsk. His childhood and youth passed there. This Volga city has forever left in the soul of Alexei Alekseevich the warmest and most tender memories. He proudly called himself Volgar throughout his life. When the boy graduated from elementary school, his father sent him to Nizhny Novgorod and sent him to the local cadet corps... The son obediently graduated from it, but military service was never the ultimate dream of the young man, who was more attracted by such sciences as history and philosophy.
Passion for philosophy
Ignoring service in the army, he went to Moscow and entered the theological seminary in two faculties at once - philosophy and history. Deeply studying philosophy, Ukhtomsky began to think a lot about the eternal questions about the world, about man, about the essence of being. In the end, philosophical secrets led him to study the natural sciences. As a result, he settled on physiology.
A.P. Borodin is known as an outstanding composer, author of the opera "Prince Igor", symphony "Heroic" and other musical works.
Much less is he known as a scientist who made an invaluable contribution to the science of organic chemistry.
Origin. early years
A.P. Borodin was the illegitimate son of the 62-year-old Georgian prince L.S.Genevanishvili and A.K. Antonova. He was born on 31.10. (12.11) 1833.
He was recorded as the son of the prince's serfs - the spouses Porfiry Ionovich and Tatiana Grigorievna Borodin. Thus, for eight years the boy was listed in his father's house as a serf. But before his death (1840), the prince gave his son free, bought him and his mother Avdotya Konstantinovna Antonova a four-story house, having previously married her to the military doctor Kleinecke.
The boy, in order to avoid unnecessary rumors, was introduced as Avdotya Konstantinovna's nephew. Since the origin did not allow Alexander to study at the gymnasium, he studied at home all the subjects of the gymnasium course, in addition, German and French, having received an excellent education at home.
George Washington Carver Jr. (1865-1943) was a renowned agricultural scientist.
Thanks to his research, they learned to produce about 300 products from peanuts alone. He found more than 100 industrial uses for a variety of crops, such as soybeans. From this culture, rubber substitutes, dyes and dyes for fabrics and much more are now obtained. President Franklin Roosevelt celebrated Carver's work in 1943 and unveiled a monument to the scientist.
Murray Gell-Mann was born on September 15, 1929 in New York and was the youngest son of emigrants from Austria Arthur and Pauline (Reichstein) Gell-Mann. At the age of fifteen, Murray entered Yale University. He graduated in 1948 with a Bachelor of Science degree. He spent the following years in graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here in 1951 Gell-Mann received his Ph.D. in physics. After a year at the Princeton Institute for Basic Research, New Jersey, Gell-Mann began working at the University of Chicago with Enrico Fermi, first lecturer (1952–1953), then assistant professor (1953–1954) and associate professor (1954– 1955).
Main area scientific interests young scientist, physicist elementary particles, in the fifties was in the stage of formation. The main means of experimental research in this department of physics were accelerators, which "fired" a beam of particles into a stationary target: new particles were born when the incident particles collided with the target. With the help of accelerators, experimenters managed to obtain several new types of elementary particles, in addition to the already known protons, neutrons and electrons. Theoretical physicists tried to find some scheme that would allow classifying all new particles.
English specialist in the field molecular biology Francis Harri Compton Creek was born on June 8, 1916 in Northampton, the eldest of two sons of Harry Compton Creek, a wealthy shoe manufacturer, and Anna Elizabeth (Wilkins) Creek. After spending his childhood in Northampton, he attended high school. During the economic crisis that followed the First World War, the family's commercial affairs declined and Francis's parents moved to London. As a student at Mill Hill School, Crick developed a keen interest in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In 1934 he entered University College London to study physics and graduated three years later with a Bachelor of Science degree. Completing his education at University College, the young scientist considered the issues of water viscosity at high temperatures; this work was interrupted in 1939 by the outbreak of World War II.
In 1940, Crick married Ruth Doreen Dodd; they had a son. They divorced in 1947, and two years later, Creek married Odile Speed. From his second marriage, he had two daughters.
During the war years, Crick was engaged in the creation of mines in the research laboratory of the British Navy. For two years after the end of the war, he continued to work in this ministry and it was then that he read Erwin Schrödinger's famous book What is Life? Physical Aspects of a Living Cell ”, published in 1944. In the book, Schrödinger asks the question: "How can spatio-temporal events occurring in a living organism be explained from the standpoint of physics and chemistry?"
Lev Davidovich Landau was born on January 9 (22), 1908 in the family of David Lvovich and Lyubov Veniaminovna (Garkavi) Landau in Baku. His father was a famous petroleum engineer who worked in the local oil fields, and his mother was a doctor. She was engaged in physiological research. Landau's older sister became a chemical engineer.
“I was not a child prodigy,” the scientist recalled about his school years. - While studying at school, I did not receive grades higher than three on essays. He was interested in mathematics. All theoretical physicists come to science from mathematics, and I was no exception. At twelve he knew how to differentiate, at thirteen - to integrate. "
Lev Davidovich was modest. High school he graduated when he was only thirteen years old. His parents thought that he was too young for a higher educational institution, and sent him to the Baku Economic College for a year.
In 1922, Landau entered Baku University, where he studied physics and chemistry; two years later he transferred to the physics department of Leningrad University. By the time he was 19 years old, Landau had managed to publish four scientific papers. One of them pioneered the use of a density matrix, a now widely used mathematical expression to describe quantum energy states.
Vasily Vasilievich Leontiev was born on August 5, 1905 in Munich. Leontyev's ancestors were simple peasants, but his great-grandfather got off the ground and moved to St. Petersburg. Vasily's grandfather became rich by opening a weaving factory there. One of his sons married an Englishwoman, from where the British branch of the Leontiev family came. The father of the future Nobel laureate was already a Russian intellectual, professor of labor economics at St. Petersburg University. So Vasily walked along the beaten path, but walked incredibly fast: at the age of fourteen he graduated from high school and in 1921 entered the Petrograd University, where he studied philosophy, sociology, and then economics.
Being at the university in the status of a child prodigy, despite all the attempts of the "only correct" doctrine, the dialectic, he allowed himself to be called a "Menshevik". In 1925, Leontiev had already completed a four-year course at the university and received a diploma in economics. At that time, education was conducted neither shaky nor shaky, but the teenager read in the university library many books on economics in Russian, English, French and German.
As one scientist aptly put it, a mathematician is someone who knows how to find analogies between statements. The best mathematician is one who establishes analogies in proofs. The stronger one may notice the analogies of theories. But there are those who see analogies between analogies. It is to these rare representatives of the latter that Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov belongs - one of the best, if not the best mathematician of the twentieth century.
Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov was born on April 12 (25), 1903 in Tambov. Andrei's aunts in their house organized a school for children of different ages who lived nearby, worked with them - a dozen children - according to the recipes of the latest pedagogy. The handwritten magazine "Spring Swallows" was published for the children. It published the creative work of students - drawings, poems, stories. Andrey's "scientific works" also appeared in it - arithmetic problems invented by him. Here the boy published his first scientific work in mathematics at the age of five. True, this was just a well-known algebraic pattern, but the boy himself noticed it, without any outside help!
At the age of seven, Kolmogorov was assigned to a private gymnasium. It was organized by a circle of Moscow progressive intelligentsia and was under the threat of closure all the time.
Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov was born on December 30, 1902 (January 12, 1903) in the family of an assistant forester in Bashkiria. In 1909 the family moved to Simbirsk. In 1912 the Kurchatovs moved to Simferopol. Here the boy enters the first grade of the gymnasium.
Igor is fond of football, French wrestling, wood sawing, and reads a lot. He got hold of Corbino's book "The Success of Modern Technology", which further strengthened his craving for technology. Igor began to collect technical literature. Dreaming of becoming an engineer, he and his classmates study analytical geometry as part of a university course, solving numerous mathematical problems.
But with every year of the First World War, the financial situation of the family became more and more difficult. I had to help my father. Igor worked in the garden and, together with his father, went to the cannery to cut firewood. In the evenings he worked in the mouthpiece workshop.
Soon Igor enters an evening craft school in Simferopol, receives the qualification of a locksmith. Later it came in handy: he worked as a mechanic at a small mechanical plant in Thyssen.
English physicist Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born on August 8, 1902 in Bristol, in the family of a Swedish-born Charles Adrien Ladislav Dirac, a French teacher in private school, and the Englishwoman Florence Hannah (Holten) Dirac.
Paul first studied at a commercial school in Bristol. He then studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Bristol from 1918 to 1921 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree. After that, Paul took another two-year course in applied mathematics at the same university. “During this mathematics education, Fraser influenced me the most ... he was an excellent teacher, able to instill in his students a sense of real admiration for the fundamental ideas of mathematics ...” Dirac recalled. “I learned two things from Fraser. First, rigorous mathematics. Until then, I only used loose mathematics that satisfied the engineers ... They didn’t care about the exact limit, how long it took to sum the series, and other such things. Fraser taught that rigorous logical ideas are sometimes necessary to deal with these objects. And further: “The second thing I learned from Fraser was projective geometry. It has deeply influenced me because of its inherent mathematical beauty ... Projective geometry always works with flat space ... it provides you with methods, such as the one-to-one correspondence method, that magically produce results; the theorems of Euclidean geometry, over which you have been tormented for a long time, are deduced in the simplest ways, using the reasoning of projective geometry. "
Werner Heisenberg was one of the youngest scientists to receive the Nobel Prize. Purposefulness and a strong spirit of competition inspired him to discover one of the most famous principles of science - the principle of uncertainty.
Werner Karl Heisenberg was born on December 5, 1901 in the German city of Würzburg. Werner's father, August, thanks to his successful scientific activity, managed to rise to the level of representatives of the upper class of the German bourgeoisie. In 1910 he became professor of Byzantine philology at the University of Munich. The boy's mother was née Anna Veklein.
From the very birth of Werner, his family firmly decided that he, too, must achieve a high social position through education. Believing that rivalry should be conducive to success in science, his father provoked Werner and his older brother Erwin into constant competition. Over the years, the boys often fought, and one day the rivalry drove them to such a fight that they beat each other with wooden chairs. Growing up, each of them went their own way: Erwin went to Berlin and became a chemist, they almost did not communicate, apart from rare meetings with his family.
“The great Italian physicist Enrico Fermi,” wrote Bruno Pontecorvo, “occupies a special place among modern scientists: in our time, when narrow specialization in scientific research has become typical, it is difficult to indicate an equally universal physicist that Fermi was. It can even be said that the appearance on the scientific arena of the 20th century of a person who made such a huge contribution to the development of theoretical physics, and experimental physics, and astronomy, and technical physics is a unique phenomenon rather than a rare one ”.
Enrico Fermi was born on September 29, 1901 in Rome. He was the youngest of three children of railway employee Alberto Fermi and née Ida de Gattis, a teacher. Even as a child, Enrico discovered great talent for mathematics and physics. His outstanding knowledge in these sciences, acquired mainly as a result of self-education, allowed him to receive a scholarship in 1918 and enter the Higher Normal School at the University of Pisa. Then, under the patronage of Senator Corbino, Associate Professor at the Physics Institute of the University of Rome, Enrico received a temporary position as a teacher of mathematics for chemists at the University of Rome. In 1923 he received a business trip to Germany, to Göttingen, to Max Born. Fermi does not feel very confident, and only the great moral support of Ehrenfest, whom he had in Leiden from September to December 1924, helped him to believe in his vocation as a physicist. Upon his return to Italy, Fermi from January 1925 until the fall of 1926 worked at the University of Florence. Here he earns his first degree as a "free assistant professor" and, most importantly, creates his famous work on quantum statistics. In December 1926, he took up the position of professor of the newly established Department of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome. Here he organized a team of young physicists: Rasetti, Amaldi, Segre, Pontecorvo and others, who made up the Italian school of modern physics.
Nikolai Nikolaevich Semyonov was born on April 3 (15), 1896 in Saratov, in the family of Nikolai Alexandrovich and Elena Dmitrievna Semyonov. After graduating from a real school in Samara in 1913, he entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University, where, studying with the famous Russian physicist Abram Ioffe, he showed himself to be an active student.
After graduating from the university in 1917, in the year of the accomplishment of the Russian revolution, Nikolai was left to prepare for a professorship. Until the spring of 1918 he worked in Petrograd.
This is how the scientist himself wrote about that time in one of his autobiographies:
“Being carried away by scientific work, I had little interest in politics and had a poor understanding of events. In the spring of 1918, I went on vacation to my parents in Samara, where I was caught by the Czechoslovak coup. Under the influence of the petty-bourgeois environment around me and the well-known trust that the petty bourgeoisie had in the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries (as you know, headed the Samara Komuch), I voluntarily joined the so-called people's army of the Samara Constituent Assembly in mid-July.
Pythagoras (c. 580-500 BC)
Every student knows: "In a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the legs." But few people know that Pythagoras was still a philosopher, religious thinker and politician, it was he who introduced the term "philosophy" into our language, which means "wisdom". He founded a school, whose students were called Pythagoreans, and he was the first to use the word "cosmos".
Democritus (460-c. 370 BC)
Democritus, like other philosophers of the Ancient World, was always interested in the question of what is the fundamental principle of the Universe. Some sages believed that water, others - fire, others - air, and fourth - all taken together. Democritus was not convinced by their arguments. Reflecting on the fundamental principle of the world, he came to the conclusion that it is the smallest indivisible particles, which he called atoms. There are a great many of them. The whole world consists of them. They connect, separate. He made this discovery by logical reasoning. And after more than two thousand years, scientists of our time with the help of physical devices have proved his correctness.
Euclid (c. 365-300 BC)
A disciple of Plato, Euclid wrote the treatise "Beginnings" in 13 books. In them, the scientist outlined the foundations of geometry, which in Greek means "the science of measuring the Earth", which for many centuries was called Euclidean geometry. The ancient Greek king Ptolemy I Soter, who ruled in Egyptian Alexandria, demanded that Euclid, who explained to him the laws of geometry, make it shorter and faster. He replied: “Oh, great king, in geometry there are no royal roads ... "
Archimedes (287-212 BC)
Archimedes remained in history as one of the most famous Greek mechanics, inventors and mathematicians, who amazed his contemporaries with his amazing machines. Observing the work of the builders, who with the help of thick sticks moved the stone blocks, Archimedes realized that the longer the lever, the greater the force of its impact. He told the Syracuse king Hieron: "Give me a foothold and I will move the Earth." Hieron didn't believe it. And then Archimedes, with the help of a complex system of mechanisms, with the effort of one hand, pulled a ship ashore, which was usually pulled out of the water by hundreds of people.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
The great Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci proved himself to be a universal creator. He was a sculptor, architect, inventor. An ingenious master, he made a huge contribution to art, culture and science. In Italy he was called a sorcerer, a wizard, a man who can do anything. Infinitely talented, he created various mechanisms, designed unprecedented aircraft such as a modern helicopter, and invented a tank.
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
Nicolaus Copernicus became famous in the scientific world for his astronomical discoveries. Its heliocentric system replaced the previous, Greek, geocentric one. He was the first to scientifically prove that the Sun does not revolve around the Earth, but vice versa. The earth and other planets revolve around the sun. Nicolaus Copernicus was a versatile scientist. Widely educated, he was engaged in the treatment of people, was well versed in economics, he made various devices and machines. Nicolaus Copernicus wrote in Latin and German all his life. Not a single document was found written by him in Polish.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
The young Florentine Galileo Galilei, who studied at the University of Pisa, attracted the attention of professors not only with clever reasoning, but also with original inventions. But the gifted student was expelled from the 3rd year, since his father did not have money for his studies. But Galileo was lucky - the young men found a patron, the rich Marquis Guidobaldo del Moite, who was fond of science. He supported 22-year-old Galileo. Thanks to the marquis, the world received a man who showed his genius in mathematics, physics, astronomy. Even during his lifetime, Galileo was compared to Archimedes. He was the first to declare that the universe is infinite.
René Descartes (1596-1650)
Like many of the great thinkers of antiquity, Descartes was universal. He laid the foundations of analytical geometry, created many algebraic notation, discovered the law of conservation of motion, explained the primary causes of the motion of celestial bodies. Descartes studied at the best French Jesuit college in La Flash. And there, at the beginning of the 17th century, strict orders reigned. The disciples got up early and ran to prayer. Only one, the best pupil was allowed to stay in bed due to poor health - this was Rene Descartes. So he developed the habit of reasoning, finding solutions to mathematical problems. Later, according to legend, it was in these morning hours that a thought was born to him that spread throughout the whole world: "I think, therefore I exist."
Isaac Newton (1643-1727)
Isaac Newton - a brilliant English scientist, experimenter, researcher, he is also a mathematician, astronomer, inventor, made a lot of discoveries that determined the physical picture of the surrounding world. According to legend, the law universal gravitation Isaac Newton discovered in his garden. He watched the falling apple and realized that the Earth attracts all objects, and the heavier the object, the more it is attracted to the Earth. Reflecting on this, he deduced the law of universal gravitation: All bodies are attracted to each other with a force proportional to both masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
James Watt (1736-1819)
James Watt is considered one of the creators of the technical revolution that has transformed the world. They tried to tame the energy of steam in ancient times. The Greek scientist Heroi, who lived in Alexandria in the 1st century, built the first steam turbine, which rotated when burning wood in a heater. In Russia in the 18th century, mechanic Ivan Polzunov also tried to tame the energy of steam, but his machine was not widely used. And only the English, or rather, the Scottish self-taught mechanic James Watt managed to design such a machine, which was used first in mines, then in factories, and then on steam locomotives and steamers.
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794)
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier is versatile, he was successful in financial transactions, but was especially fond of chemistry. He made many discoveries, to his liking, he became the founder of modern chemistry and would have accomplished a lot if not for the radicalism of the Great french revolution... In his youth, Antoine Lavoisier participated in the Academy of Sciences competition for the best way to illuminate streets. To increase the sensitivity of his eyes, he upholstered his room with black cloth. Antoine described the acquired new perception of light in a work that he submitted to the Academy, and received a gold medal for it. For scientific research in the field of mineralogy he was elected a member of the Academy at the age of 25.
Justus Liebig (1803-1873)
Justus Liebig is credited with creating food concentrates. He developed a technology for the production of meat extract, which is now called "bouillon cube". The German Chemical Society erected a monument to him in Munich. The outstanding German professor of organic chemistry, Justus Liebig, spent his entire life researching the ways of plant nutrition, solving issues of rational use of fertilizers. He did a lot to increase the productivity of agricultural crops. Russia for the help it rendered in raising agriculture awarded the scientist with two Orders of St. Anne, England made him an honorary citizen, in Germany he received the title of baron.
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
Louis Pasteur is a rare example of a scientist who had neither medical nor chemical education. He made his way to science on his own, without any protégés, out of personal interest. But scientists showed interest in him, who noticed considerable abilities in the young man. And Louis Pasteur became an eminent French microbiologist and chemist, a member of the French Academy, created a pasteurization process. An institute was created especially for him in Paris, which was later named after him. A Russian microbiologist, laureate Nobel Prize in the field of physiology and medicine Ilya Mechnikov.
Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833-1896)
Alfred Bernhard Nobel, a Swedish chemical engineer invented dynamite, who patented it in 1867 and suggested using it for tunneling. This invention made Nobel famous all over the world and brought him enormous profits. The word dynamite in Greek means "strength." This explosive substance, which consists of nitroglycerin, potassium or sodium nitrate and wood flour, depending on its volume, can destroy a car, a house, and destroy a rock. In 1895, Nobel drew up a will, according to which most of his capital went to awards for excellence in chemistry, physics, medicine, literature and peacebuilding.
Robert Heinrich Hermann Koch (1843-1910)
Close communication with nature later determined the choice of profession - Robert Koch became a microbiologist. It all started in childhood. On the mother's side, Robert Koch's grandfather was a great lover of nature, he often took his beloved 7-year-old grandson with him to the forest, told him about the life of trees, herbs, talked about the benefits and dangers of insects. Microbiologist Koch fought against the worst diseases of mankind - anthrax, cholera and tuberculosis. And he came out the winner. For his achievements in the fight against tuberculosis in 1905 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen (1845-1923)
In 1895, a photograph of the hand of Wilhelm Roentgen's wife, taken with X-rays (X-rays, later named after their discoverer X-rays), was placed in a German scientific journal, aroused great interest in the scientific world. Before Roentgen, none of the physicists had done anything like this. This photograph testified that penetration into the depths of the human body took place without physically opening it. It was a breakthrough in medicine, in the recognition of diseases. For the discovery of these rays, William Roentgen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
During his life, Edison improved the telegraph, the telephone, created a microphone, invented a phonograph and, most importantly, illuminated America with his incandescent light bulb, and beyond it the whole world. There has never been a more resourceful person in American history than Thomas Edison. In total, he is the author of over 1000 patented inventions in the United States and about 3000 in other countries. But before achieving such an outstanding result, he, according to his own frank statements, made many tens of thousands of unsuccessful experiments and experiments.
Maria Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934)
Maria Sklodowska Curie graduated from the Sorbonne, the largest higher educational institution France, and became the first woman teacher in its history. Together with her husband Pierre Curie, she first discovered radium, a decay product of uranium-238, then polonium. The study and use of the radioactive properties of radium played a huge role in the study of the structure of the atomic nucleus, the phenomenon of radioactivity. Among world-class scientists, Maria Sklodowska-Curie occupies a special place, she twice became a Nobel Prize laureate: in 1903 in physics, in 1911 - in chemistry. Such an outstanding result is rare even among men.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Albert Einstein is one of the founders of theoretical physics, Nobel Prize laureate, public figure. But he made a strange impression on his contemporaries: he dressed casually, loved sweaters, did not brush his hair, could show his tongue to the photographer, and generally did God knows what. But behind this frivolous appearance was a paradoxical scientist - thinker, the author of over 600 works on various topics. His theory of relativity revolutionized science. It turned out that the world around us is not so simple. Space-time is curved, and as a result, gravity, the course of time change, the sun's rays deviate from the direct direction.
Alexander Fleming (1881-1955)
Alexander Fleming, a native of Scotland, an English bacteriologist, spent his entire life looking for medicines that could help a person cope with infectious diseases. He was able to find a substance that kills bacteria in the mold penicillum. And the first antibiotic, penicillin, appeared, which revolutionized medicine. Fleming first discovered that in the mucous membranes of a person there is special liquid, which not only prevents the penetration of microbes, but also kills them. He isolated this substance, it was called lysozyme.
Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)
Robert Oppenheimer - American physicist, creator atomic bomb, was very worried when he learned about the terrible casualties and destruction caused by the American atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. He was a conscientious person and later called on scientists all over the world not to create weapons of enormous destructive power. He entered the history of science as "the father of the atomic bomb" and as the discoverer of black holes in the Universe.
photo from the Internet
Which allows people to learn more about the fundamental laws of the planet Earth. Every day people do not notice how they use the benefits that have become possible thanks to the work of numerous scientists. If it were not for their selfless work, a person would not be able to fly in an airplane, cross the oceans on huge liners, and even just turn on electric kettle... All these selfless researchers have made the appearance of the world the way modern people see it.
Galileo's discoveries
Physicist Galileo is one of the most famous. He is a physicist, astronomer, mathematician and mechanic. It was he who first invented the telescope. With the help of this unprecedented apparatus for that time, it was possible to observe distant celestial bodies. Galileo Galilei is the founder of the experimental direction in physical science. The first discoveries that Galileo made with a telescope saw the light of day in his Star Messenger. This book was truly a sensational success. Since Galileo's ideas in many ways contradicted the Bible, for a long time he was persecuted by the Inquisition.
Biography and discoveries of Newton
Isaac Newton is also a great scientist who made discoveries in many fields. The most famous of his discoveries is In addition, a physicist explained many natural phenomena on the basis of mechanics, and also described the features of the movement of planets around the Sun, Moon and Earth. Newton was born on January 4, 1643 in the English town of Woolsthorpe.
After graduating from high school, he went to college at University of Cambridge... The physics scientists who taught at the college had a great influence on Newton. Inspired by the example of teachers, Newton made some of his first discoveries. They were mainly related to the field of mathematics. Next, Newton begins to conduct experiments on the decomposition of light. In 1668 he received his master's degree. In 1687, Newton's first serious scientific work, "Beginnings", was published. In 1705, the scientist was awarded the title of knight, and the English ruler of that era personally thanked Newton for his research.
Woman physicist: Maria Curie-Sklodowska
Physicists all over the world still use the achievements of Maria Curie-Sklodowska in their work. She is the only female physicist to be nominated for the Nobel Prize twice. Maria Curie was born on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw. In childhood, a tragedy happened in the girl's family - her mother and one of her sisters died. During her studies at school, Marie Curie was distinguished by her diligence and interest in science.
In 1890 she moved to her older sister in Paris, where she entered the Sorbonne. Then she met her future husband, Pierre Curie. As a result of many years of scientific research, the couple discovered two new radioactive elements - radium and polonium. Shortly before the start of the war, it was opened in France where Marie Curie served as director. In 1920, she published a book titled Radiology and War, which summarized her scientific experience.
Albert Einstein: one of the planet's greatest minds
Physicists all over the planet know the name of Albert Einstein. The theory of relativity belongs to him. Modern physics is largely based on the views of Einstein, despite the fact that not all modern scientists agree with his discoveries. Einstein was a Nobel laureate. During his life, he wrote about 300 scientific worksconcerning physics, as well as 150 works on the history and philosophy of science. Until the age of 12, Einstein was a very religious child, as he received his education in a Catholic school. After little Albert read several scientific books, he came to the conclusion: not all statements in the Bible can be true.
Many believe that Einstein was a genius since childhood. This is far from the case. As a schoolboy, Einstein was considered a very weak student. Although even then he was interested in mathematics, physics, and also the philosophical works of Kant. In 1896, Einstein entered faculty of Education in Zurich, where he also met his future wife, Mileva Marich. In 1905, some articles were published by Einstein, which, however, were criticized by some physicists. In 1933, Einstein moved to the United States for good.
Other researchers
But there are other famous names of physicists who have made equally significant discoveries in their field. These are V. K. Roentgen, S. Hawking, N. Tesla, L. L. Landau, N. Bohr, M. Planck, E. Fermi, M. Faraday, A. A. Becquerel and many others. Their contribution to physical science is equally important.
Virtual review of the literature on the history of scientific and technical inventions of mankind in the 18-19 centuries. on the pages of publications from the collection of rare and valuable books.
It is obvious to people of our time that science and technology play a very important and decisive role in modern society. However, this was not always the case. The ancient Greeks, for example, viewed the trade of a mechanic as an occupation of commoners, not worthy of a true scientist. The later world religions, at first, rejected science altogether. One of the fathers of the Christian church, Tertullian, argued that after the Gospel, no other knowledge is needed. Muslims reasoned in a similar way. When the Arabs conquered Alexandria, they burned down the famous Library of Alexandria - Caliph Omar said that since there is the Koran, there is no need for other books. This dogma prevailed until the beginning of modern times. The dissidents were pursued by the Inquisition, threatening to be burned at the stake. The inventors of new mechanisms were persecuted. For example, in 1579, in Danzig, the mechanic who created the ribbon loom was executed. The reason for the massacre was the fear of the municipality that this invention would cause unemployment among the weavers. Understanding of the role of science came only in the era of the Enlightenment, in the 17th century, when the first Academies in Europe were created. The first achievement new science was the discovery of the laws of mechanics - including the law of universal gravitation. These discoveries have caused delight in the community. The industrial revolution dramatically changed the lives of people, the traditional way of rural life was replaced by a new, industrial society. Amazing discoveries and inventions followed one after another, the world was changing rapidly in front of one generation.
About two inventors - Stephenson and Fulton, whose great creations forever changed the way of life of mankind, tells in his biographical sketches Yakov Vasilyevich Abramov.
Stephenson and Fulton: (inventors of the steam locomotive and the steamer): their life and scientific and practical activities: biographical sketches with portraits of Stephenson and Fulton engraved in Leipzig by Gedan / Ya. V. Abramov. - St. Petersburg: Typo-lithography and phototyping of V.I. Stein, 1893. - 78 p., 2 sheets. portr. ; 18 cm. - (The life of remarkable people: (ZhZL). Biographical library F. Pavlenkov). (6 (09I) A16 34977M-RF)
George Stephenson is undoubtedly one of the heroic people of strong will. In the preface to the book, the author writes about him: “A worker by origin, having received no school educationbeing even illiterate until adulthood, Stephenson not only managed to overcome all the unfavorable conditions of his life, acquire significant diverse knowledge, achieve a high social position, but also became one of the outstanding geniuses of mankind. The inventor, mechanical engineer gained worldwide fame thanks to the steam locomotive he designed. Stephenson is also considered one of the "fathers" of railways. The track gauge he chose was called Stephenson's track and is still the standard in many countries around the world. The author notes that there are few other biographies that can arouse the same interest as the biography of George Stephenson.
George (George) Stephenson was born in a small poor village of miners near the city of Newcastle. Four families were crowded in the house where the Stephensons lived. From the age of 6, George sorted coal in the mine, then helped his father-fireman. At the age of 17, young George Stephenson, who thoroughly studied the structure of a steam engine operating in a mine, and was able to fix any malfunction, was appointed its driver. George was one of those natures who, having set themselves any goal, persistently go to achieve it. At the age of 18, he, not paying attention to the ridicule of his comrades, learned to read and write. Through persistent self-education, Stephenson acquired the specialty of a steam mechanic.
Over the next years, he studied steam engines. The first steam locomotive, designed by Stephenson, was intended for towing coal carts. This locomotive did not more than a kilometer per hour, and during a month of work it was shaken so that it ceased to function. His second steam locomotive seemed then a real miracle. He could drive a train with a total weight of up to 30 tons. The car was named "Blucher" in honor of the Prussian field marshal, famous for his victory in the battle with Napoleon.
Over the next five years, Stephenson built 16 more machines.
George founded the world's first steam locomotive plant in Newcastle, where he built the Active locomotive in September 1825, later renamed Locomotive. Stephenson himself drove a train loaded with 80 tons of coal and flour, which in some sections accelerated to 39 km / h. In addition to the cargo, the train included an open passenger carriage "Experiment". This was the first case in world practice of using a steam-powered railroad to transport passengers.
In 1829, several locomotive competitions were held, which went down in history as the "Reinhil Trials". Stephenson put up his Raketa steam locomotive for the competition. He had 4 opponents. Stephenson's steam locomotive was the only one to successfully complete all tests. Its maximum speed reached 48 km / h. The brilliant victory of the Rocket made it perhaps the most famous mechanism in the history of technology.
Gradually Stephenson practically retired, only building tunnels for the railway and developing new coal seams. His son Robert also became a talented engineer and helped his father in everything. Steam locomotives began to be built in other countries according to the projects of George Stephenson. He belonged to those happy inventors who happened to see their ideas embodied during their lifetime.
The second character in the book, whose name is also associated with steam engines, is the equally famous inventor Robert Fulton. Robert was born in Pennsylvania, USA. His parents, bankrupt farmers, were forced to emigrate to America. The family had five children. His father was mainly engaged in heavy day work and died when Robert was only three years old. The family finally found itself in distress. Fulton always remembered with reverence his mother, who managed not only to raise children, but also to give them the opportunity to get at least elementary education at the local school and pay for their tuition. From an early age, Robert discovered a penchant for two pursuits: painting and mechanics. Studying mathematics and theoretical mechanics, Robert Fulton became interested in the idea of \u200b\u200busing steam in shipping. He constantly had to find funds for his inventions and occasionally fail. He began experimenting with torpedoes and even presented Napoleon with a practical model of the Nautilus submarine. Fulton presented plans to build the steamer to the governments of the United States and Great Britain, but despite his best efforts, he could not find the funds to implement them. At that time he was already 31 years old.
At the request of US Ambassador Robert Livingston, Fulton began experiments with steam engines. In 1803, a steam vessel 20 m long and 2.4 m wide was tested on the Seine River. But, despite the successful experience, not a single capitalist was found who would invest in the implementation and operation of the invention.
Robert goes to America, where he was given a twenty-year privilege to sail on steamers on the Hudson, on the condition that within two years he builds a steamer capable of going against the current at a speed of at least 6 knots per hour. Encouraged by the success, Fulton ordered a new, more powerful steam engine and went to work.
In 1807, Fulton's steamer set sail. The length of the vessel was 45 m, its engine had one cylinder, oak and pine firewood was used as fuel. When tested, he swam a distance of 240 km from average speed 4.7 mph while the monopoly only claimed 4 mph. After installing the cabins on the steamer, Robert Fulton began commercial voyages, carrying passengers and light cargo. He patented his steamer and in the following years built several more steam ships. In 1814, construction began on the 44-gun warship Demologos for the needs of the US Navy, but this project was completed after his death.
"The Republic of Scientists is not a monastery with only one charter: it consists of individuals who have in common only an interest in science and extraordinary talents," writes the author of the next book, beginning a story about the outstanding European scientists of the 18th century - Laplace and Euler.
Laplace and Euler: their life and scientific activity: biographical sketches: with portraits of Laplace and Euler, engraved in Leipzig by Gedan / EF Litvinova. - St. Petersburg: Printing House of the Public Benefit Partnership ", 1892. - 79 p., 2 sheets of portra. (51 (09I) L64 27165M-RF).
Elizaveta Fedorovna believes that the main feature scientific papers Pierre Simon Laplace is their great accessibility for non-specialists. For example, his essay "The World System" can be read by everyone educated personbecause it is simple and clear. A French mathematician and astronomer, known for his work in the field of differential equations, one of the founders of the theory of probability, Laplace was the chairman of the Chamber of Weights and Measures, headed the Bureau of Longitudes. His treatises on probability theory Paris academy published in 13 volumes. But most of Pierre Laplace's research relates to celestial mechanics, which he has been doing all his life. Laplace worked on the five-volume essay "A Treatise on Celestial Mechanics" for 26 years. He compiled more accurate tables of the moon, which was important in determining the longitudes at sea and, therefore, played a large role in navigation. The ancients desperately called the phenomenon of ebb and flow the tomb of human curiosity. Laplace was the first to realize with confidence the connection between these phenomena and the attractive power of the Moon and the Sun. Undoubtedly, Pierre Laplace was a great scientist and well-educated person: he knew languages, history, chemistry and biology, loved poetry, music, painting. He had an excellent memory and, to a ripe old age, read by heart whole pages from the French poet and playwright Jean Racine. There were many talented young scientists around him, whom he patronized.
During his life, Pierre Laplace was a member of six academies of sciences and royal societies. His name is included in the list of the greatest scientists of France, placed on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. A crater on the Moon, an asteroid, as well as numerous concepts and theorems in mathematics are named after Laplace.
The hero of the second essay by E. F. Litvinova is Leonard Euler, an outstanding German scientist who made a significant contribution to the development of mechanics, physics, astronomy and a number of applied sciences. Euler is recognized as the most prolific mathematician in history. He spent almost half of his life in Russia, was an academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, knew Russian well, and published some of his works (especially textbooks) in Russian.
At this time, the St. Petersburg Academy was one of the main centers of mathematics in the world. Here were the most favorable conditions for the flowering of the genius of Leonard Euler. One day, the Academy had to do a very difficult job of calculating the trajectory of a comet. According to the academicians, this required several months of work. L. Euler undertook to do this in three days and completed the work, but due to overstrain he fell seriously ill with inflammation of the right eye, which he subsequently lost. Soon, two volumes of his analytical mechanics appeared, then two parts of an introduction to arithmetic in german and new theory music. For his essay on the ebb and flow of the seas, Leonard Euler received a prize from the French Academy.
Enviable health and light character helped Euler “to withstand the blows of fate that fell to his lot. Always an even mood, cheerfulness, good-natured mockery and the ability to tell funny stories made a conversation with him pleasant and desirable ... ”Euler was constantly surrounded by numerous grandchildren, often a child was sitting in his arms, and a cat was lying on his neck. He himself studied mathematics with children. And all this did not prevent him from working. During his life, Leonard Euler wrote about 900 scientific papers.
Thomas Edison said: "Discontent is the first condition for progress." The degree of "dissatisfaction" of the great scientist is evidenced by his 1,093 patents for inventions. To make the world more convenient, he invented the phonograph, built the world's first public power station, improved the telegraph and telephone, and an incandescent lamp.
Edison and Morse: their life and scientific and practical activities: two biographical sketches / A. V. Kamensky. - St. Petersburg: Printing house Yu. N. Erlikh, 1891. - 80 p., Front. (portr.); 19 cm. - (The life of remarkable people: (ZhZL). Biographical library of F. Pavlenkov). (6 (09I) K18 35638M-RF)
Thomas Edison registered his first patent at the age of 22. Later, he worked so productively that he created, on average, one small invention every 10 days and one large one every six months. Under what circumstances these technical achievements of the American engineer were made, tells the author of his biography A. V. Kamensky.
When Thomas was 7 years old, his father went bankrupt, and the future inventor, not wanting to come to terms with the fall of his family, went headlong into his studies. True, the school soon had to say goodbye. His mother, a former school teacher, continued his homeschooling. At the age of 10, Thomas immersed himself in chemical experiments and created his first laboratory in the basement of his house. Money was needed to conduct the experiments, and at the age of 12, Edison began working. He sold newspapers, fruits and candy on trains. In order not to waste time, he moved the chemical laboratory to the baggage car provided at his disposal, where he almost started a fire. At the age of 15, Thomas bought a printing press with the saved money and began to publish his own newspaper right in the luggage car of the train in which he worked, and sell it to passengers.
Edison was attracted by everything innovative, so he soon changed the railway to the telegraph. From the very first days of his work as a telegraph operator, he thought about improving the telegraph apparatus. Edison invents an electric voter recorder, but there are no buyers for this patent. Then Thomas decided for himself that he would work only on inventions with guaranteed demand. In the future, he expanded the boundaries of the capabilities of the telegraph: now it could transmit not only SOS signals, but also information about exchange rates. On this invention, Edison earned 40 thousand dollars and soon organized a workshop where he made automatic telegraphs and other electrical equipment.
In 1877, Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, which he will consider his favorite creation until the end of his life. The press called the phonograph "the greatest discovery of the century," and Edison himself suggested many ways to use it: dictation of letters and documents without the help of a stenographer, reproduction of music, recording of negotiations. Edison's new invention that shook the world was an apparatus for displaying sequential photographs - a kinescope. In April 1896 Edison held the first public screening of a motion picture in New York, and in 1913 he demonstrated a motion picture with synchronized soundtrack.
Until the end of his life, Thomas Edison was engaged in the improvement of this world. At the age of 85, dying, he said to his wife: “If there is anything after death, it is good. If not, that's fine too. I lived my life and did the best I could ... ”.
The next hero - Samuel Finley Morse is known throughout the world as the inventor of the electromagnetic writing telegraph - "Morse apparatus" and the transmission code - "Morse code".
Samuel (Samuel) Morse was born in Massachusetts in a wealthy American family, graduated from Yale College. He was indifferent to science, although he was attracted by lectures on electricity. Samuel also liked to paint miniature portraits of acquaintances. Painting fascinated him so much that his parents sent him to England to study art at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1813, Morse presented his painting "Dying Hercules" to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, for which he was awarded a gold medal.
After returning home, he led the life of an itinerant painter for ten years, painting portraits. I must say that Samuel was very sociable and charming, he was eagerly received in noble houses. Even US President Lincoln was among his friends. In New York, he creates some very interesting portraits and founds the National Academy of Design. During his second trip to Europe, S. Morse met the famous scientist L. Daguerre and became interested in the latest discoveries in the field of electricity. And after, at the university, he was shown a description of the model of the electromagnetic telegraph proposed by the German physicist W. Weber, he completely gave himself up to invention. The scientist knew that an electric current runs almost instantly along the longest wire and that a spark arises when it meets an obstacle. Why can't this spark represent a word, letter, number? Why not come up with an alphabet for transmitting words with electricity? This thought haunted Morse. It took years of work and study for his telegraph to work. In 1837, he developed a system for transmitting letters with dots and dashes, which became known throughout the world as Morse code. However, he did not find support in introducing the idea either at home, or in England, or in France, or in Russia, meeting everywhere a refusal. Samuel returned home from his trip to Europe with broken hopes and almost in poverty.
In another attempt to interest the US Congress in the creation of telegraph lines, he attracted a congressman as partners, and in 1843 Morse received a subsidy of $ 30,000 to build the first telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington. Having received the necessary funds, Morse immediately set about setting up a test telegraph line, which was completed a little over a year later, although the public was still outraged for a long time that Congress wasted public money on such a crazy enterprise. A few years later, the telegraph spread to America, and after that in Europe and was recognized as one of the most amazing discoveries of our century. Newspapers, railways and banks quickly found use for it. Telegraph lines instantly entwined the whole world, Morse's fortune and fame multiplied. The man who often had to starve now did not know how to get rid of the lavish dinners and celebrations arranged in his honor. The representatives of ten European governments at a special congress jointly decided to issue 400,000 francs to Morse. In 1858, he bought an estate near New York and spent the rest of his life there with a large family among children and grandchildren. In old age, Morse became a philanthropist. He has sponsored schools, universities, churches, missionaries, and poor artists.
After his death, Morse's fame as an inventor began to fade, as the telegraph was supplanted by the telephone, radio and television. But, oddly enough, his reputation as an artist grew. He did not consider himself a portrait painter, but his paintings, which depict Lafayette and other prominent people, are known to many. His 1837 telegraph is kept in the US National Museum, and his country house is recognized as a historical monument.
Throughout the history of mankind, no less interest than the conquest of the water ocean was the conquest of the air ocean. The idea of \u200b\u200bgoing up into the sky has excited human minds since ancient times. The first mentions of attempts of this kind date back to the 4th-5th centuries BC. The book "Conquest of the Air" is just about that. The authors of the articles included in this collection are German writers, scientists, engineers and aeronautics: G. Dominik, F. M. Feldhaus, O. Neischler, A. Stolberg, O. Steffens, N. Stern.
Conquest of the air: a handbook on aeronautics and aircraft technology: compiled on the basis of the latest discoveries and inventions: from 162 fig. in the text / per. with him. M. Kadish; ed. foreword gr. Zeppelin. - Moscow: "Titan" publishing house: Printing house of the trading house MV Baldin and Co,. -, 400 p. : ill. (6T5 (09I) Z-13 27861 - RF)
Here are collected materials devoted to the first flight experiences: from folk tales and legends to the appearance of balloons and controlled balloons, as well as the use of air vehicles for scientific, sports and cultural purposes.
The first chapters of the book, authored by F.M.Feldhaus, describe the many flight attempts of the past - sometimes curious, sometimes funny and curious. In addition to the wings, which were attached to the arms or body, there were also various kinds of flying machines and ships.
A sad page in the history of aeronautics is the expedition led by the Swedish natural scientist Salomon Andre in 1897 to reach the North Pole in a balloon, during which all three of its members died. This is how Dr. A. Stolberg describes this expedition: Salomon Andre, the first Swedish balloonist, proposed organizing an expedition on a hydrogen-filled balloon from Svalbard to Russia or Canada, while its path, if lucky, had to go straight through the North Pole. The patriotic masses greeted this idea with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, André neglected the potential dangers. There was a lot of evidence that the technology he invented to control the ball with the help of lashing ropes was ineffective, but he still jeopardized the fate of the expedition. Even worse, balloon "Eagle" was delivered directly to Svalbard by its manufacturer from Paris and did not pass preliminary inspection. When measurements showed that more hydrogen was leaking than expected, André did not consider this a serious problem. Most contemporary scientists, seeing Andre's optimism, also dismissively reacted to the forces of nature, which in fact led to the death of Salomon Andre and two of his young associates Niels Strindberg and Ernst Frenkel. After taking off from Spitsbergen in July 1897, the balloon very quickly lost hydrogen and crashed in the ice just two days later. Researchers were unharmed during its fall, but died during a grueling hike south through the drifting polar ice... Lacking enough warm clothing, equipment and training, and shocked by the difficulty of traversing the terrain, they had little chance of a successful outcome. When the Arctic winter closed their further path in October, the group was trapped on the deserted Bely Island in the Spitsbergen archipelago and died there. True, in 1909 they did not know about this yet. The author of the essay assumed that the heroes of the expedition died immediately, as soon as the balloon finally lost air somewhere over the ocean. He writes: “… probably all three drowned at once; in any case, it would be the best fate ... ". For 33 years, the fate of Andre's expedition remained one of the mysteries of the Arctic. The accidental discovery in 1930 of the last camp of the expedition caused a sensation.
The book describes many more stories about successful and not very successful attempts to conquer airspace... It contains descriptions of all kinds aircraft: gliders, airplanes, monoplanes, airships ... A lot of drawings and photographs that depict fantastic and real projects of air vehicles and their creators will help to clearly understand and evaluate the structural features of each.
The history of the invention and use of flying devices in Russia contains many interesting, sometimes curious moments. It is known that rulers at all times loved to patronize the inventors of flying machines. Alexander I was also fond of aeronautics.
A very curious and little-known story is told by Alexander Alekseevich Rodnykh, a Russian popularizer and historian of science, a specialist in the history of aeronautics, a science journalist, and a science fiction writer. One of the first propagandists of K. Tsiolkovsky's ideas, a graduate of the Faculty of Mathematics of St. Petersburg University.
Secret preparation for the destruction of Napoleon's army in the twelfth year with the help of aeronautics: from the "History of aeronautics and flying in Russia": with 19 photographs from old drawings / A. Rodnykh. - [St. Petersburg]: [Type. T-va Literacy],. - 61, 124 p. : ill. (9 (C) 15 P60 36628-RF)
In his book, he talks about a very special event in the history of aeronautics and flying in Russia. It turns out that in the spring of 1812, at the behest of Alexander I, preparations for the destruction of Napoleon's army with the help of the "flying machine" of the German inventor Leppich took place in complete secrecy. Leppich volunteered to build a guided vehicle capable of taking off and dropping a huge amount of explosive shells to destroy Napoleon's army. A. Rodnykh says that Leppikh's aerial enterprise cost the Russian treasury, not counting the forest for the arrangement of the premises, heating, dressing of the skin from the skins, etc., a total of about 185,000 rubles. ABOUT appearance machines can be judged by the surviving drawing, which indicates that Leppich's idea of \u200b\u200ba controlled airship was associated with the idea of \u200b\u200bfishing, that is, with the help of fins and a tail. Despite repeated rebuilding of the design, experiments and attempts of the inventor to make the device fly, the enterprise was not crowned with success. The author writes that Leppich's failure is difficult to determine, because, without the technical data of the building itself, it is impossible to understand whether the error lies in the idea itself or in its implementation. Regarding the end of the stay of the unfortunate designer in Russia, there are different data: according to one, he was exiled abroad in 1814, according to others, he fled himself. A. Rodnykh describes in detail the history of this entertaining, adventurous, sometimes full of drama enterprise. Considering that the facts and information from the history of Russian aeronautics presented in the book are little known, this essay definitely deserves attention.
We have already said that many things, which are something commonplace for modern man, at one time made a serious revolution in the history of mankind, forcing him to take a huge step towards progress. The work of the English researcher and publicist Frederick Morel Holmes (Holmes) "Great people and their great works" is a kind of generalization, artistic and historical research of the most famous inventions and technical achievements of mankind in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Great people and their great works: stories about the structures of famous engineers / F. M. Golms; per. from English M. A. Zhebeleva. - 2nd ed. - St. Petersburg: Publishing house of O. N. Popova: Tipo-lithograph by I. Usmanov, 1903. - VIII, 272 p. : ill. (30G G63 488195-RF)
The book tells about such inventions as the steam locomotive and the steamer, whose appearance changed beyond recognition the world economy; a lighthouse capable of withstanding the impact of waves and giving a signal to ships around the clock; artificial canals, which often run above sea level; lathe, with the invention of which it became possible to manufacture parts with precisely specified dimensions.
This is how the author of the book describes the construction of the Mark Brunel tunnel, laid under the Thames: “If at that time you had to be on the Rotergit shoal near the Thames, you would be very surprised to see that instead of digging a well, they began to build a tower there ... The masons began to lay a circular tower with walls 3 feet thick and 42 feet high .... The soil was pulled out and lifted up by the machine ... And as the hole got deeper, this pipe of masonry sank into it ... 65 feet high. Little by little, all of it sank into the ground. "
And during the construction of the bridge across the Menai Strait, new ideas were needed, since the width from one coast to the other is more than 335 meters. The bridge had to be strong enough for heavy trains to pass at high speed and so high above the water that it did not interfere with navigation. The task was very difficult, but the famous engineer Robert Stephenson, the son of George Stephenson, the inventor of the steam locomotive, who was already described above, undertook its implementation. How exactly, with the use of what technologies was the first tube bridge "Britannia" built, and why was the construction of the tower necessary when digging the tunnel? Who is Marc Isambard Brunel? Answers to all these questions are given by the author of the book.
F. M. Golms acquaints readers with realistic images of great inventors, the difficult fate of themselves and their creations, many of which still serve mankind. It helps to see the surrounding reality through the prism of objects and technical means used in everyday life, revealing the secret of their birth. A separate merit of the book is a special section devoted to the history of technical innovations in our country.
This concludes the excursion into the history of scientific and technical inventions of mankind on the pages of publications of the 19th and early 20th centuries. We hope that our virtual exposition will arouse the interest of all lovers of popular science literature.