Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki

The article examines the activities of Yakov Khaimovich Ioselev, a Leningrad hydrometeorologist and member of the All-Union Geographical Society, during the Great Patriotic War. Ioselev was called to the Red Army and defended Leningrad as head of the hydrometeorological division of the Leningrad Front Headquarters’ Operations Office. While tackling the problems of hydrometeorological service for the troops, he took the lead, applied scientific approach, and was highly respected by the commanding officers. When tasked with summarizing the hydrometeorological service’s experience, Ioselev’s report turned out to be so informative that it was forwarded to Leningrad State University and defended there as a Candidate of Sciences dissertation. The actual defense took place in the last days of the University’s functioning within the blockade ring, after which it was evacuated to Saratov. Until 2000, Yakov Ioselev’s dissertation was held in classified storage in the Central Archive of the RF Ministry of Defense. This document, which is of significant interest for the historians of the hydrometeorological service and science and for the historians of the defense of Leningrad, has been declassified and is now available to researchers.

The work outlines a not entirely traditional approach to the study of the history of mathematics, associated with distinguishing the systems of mathematical thought tools (symbolic, conceptual, ideal), which allow representing and operating various types of relationships, characteristic of a particular branch of mathematics. With this approach, the main task for the history of mathematics is the analysis of the emergence, evolution, and transformation of the systems of its thinking tools, from the standpoint of expanding the horizons of knowledge and reaching new levels of abstraction, and broadening the array of methods for using such tools. To demonstrate the results of application of this approach, the authors examined one of the sections of functional analysis, the theory of positive operators, in the context of the history of its genesis and initial development from the mid-1900s to the 1960s. On this path, key thinking tools related to the finite-dimensional period of development of the theory (positive matrices, oscillatory matrices, etc.) and expressing the relationships between its significant mathematical entities (Perronʼs theorem) were identified. In addition, the first steps were made towards comprehending further transformation of the said tools (the concept of a cone, the definition of positive functionals and operators) and mathematical relationships (Jentzsch’s and Urysohn’s theorems in the integral and abstract forms, etc.). The results obtained by O. Kellogg, C. Sturm, M. G. Krein, F. R. Gantmakher, M. A. Rutman, M. A. Krasnoselskii, L. A. Ladyzhenskii and other mathematicians are discussed in the article.

The article examines the history of the first five international congresses of biochemistry, held in 1949–1961, and the USSR Academy of Sciences’ participation in these congresses. International congress organizers persistently invited Soviet scientists to collaborate, which answered the Academy’s wishes. At the same time, however, numerous restrictions that existed in the USSR hindered international contacts. It is shown how these restrictions were gradually eased over these 12 years and how the attitude of Soviet leadership towards international scientific cooperation evolved from prohibiting Soviet scientists’ participation in international conventions to permitting such participation although subject to prior approval by the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. Looking into the history of the said international biochemical congresses provides an idea of main research areas in biochemistry of the time, of the role of individual scientists in their development and the role of socio-cultural factors in the advancement of biochemical research, and of the importance of international congresses. The main feature of the evolution of biochemistry at the time was the formation of a new biological discipline of molecular biology on the basis of biochemistry.

The article analyzes a highly specialized area of activities of engineer M. N. Kondakov’s design bureau (KB-KON, later OKB-43, Leningrad), the creation of “dynamo-reactive” recoilless automatic cannons in the 1930s. The following projects are considered: automatic rocket launchers AURS-82 and AURS-132, 76-mm single-shot dynamo-reactive gun RP VTA, 37-mm ARKON anti-tank rifle, 45 mm automatic cannon ARKON-45, 76-mm DRP assault rifle, 37-mm rocket-propelled anti-tank rifle RPTR, mountain rocket gun GRP, and 60-mm semi-automatic rocket gun PRP-60. Their technical characteristics and design solutions are analyzed and the contributions of design engineers V. F. Lender, A. A. Tolochkov, L. I. Gorlitskii, S. G. Bukhalovskii, E. S. Rashkov, and V. E. Slukhotskii are revealed. A conclusion is drawn regarding the features of these guns and the specifics of the design bureau’s activities as a distinct scientific school for designing artillery guns of this type. The reasons for a gradual abandonment of this line of work at engineer Kondakov’s design bureau are identified.

The article is devoted to a source study of three hand-drawn maps (“plans”) of early St. Petersburg, stored in the collections of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA) and the Russian State Military Historical Archive (GGVIA): the map of the Vyborg Side drawn by dyak (clerk) Larion Protasov (1714), the map of the Admiralty Fortress drawn by an unknown author (1716), and a hydrographic map of St. Petersburg by michman (midshipman) Ignatii Plemyannikov (1725). These cartographic documents are little known even to the specialists in the history of St. Petersburg and are seldom used in scientific research unlike, e. g. Western-European printed (engraved) maps. The first cartographic works, based on instrumental surveys and covering the territory of St. Petersburg, date back to the 1730s (J. von Siegheim’s map of 1736 and the “academic” plan of 1737). However, scientific cartography of St. Petersburg, i. e. cartography based on, inter alia, mathematical calculations, began much earlier. An example of this are the hand-drawn maps (“plans”) of St. Petersburg and its parts from the 1710s – 1720s that are discussed in the article. The first document shows the buildings and land plots, mainly on the Vyborg Side, and has a scale line. The plan of the Admiralty Fortress, on the contrary, is not to scale although it shows the heights of the fortifications. Finally, the hydrographic map, created for navigation and piloting purposes, indicates the depths in the Gulf of Finland at the mouth of the Great Neva, as well as of the channels of the rivers Little Neva, Great Nevka, and Little Nevka. Created for different purposes and with varying degrees of professional cartographic skills, these maps reflect the general trend in the realization of geographical knowledge of the Petrine era, a departure from the semantic principles of ancient Russian cartography in favor of creating cartographic works based on a mathematical foundation and numerical indicators. With these documents, we are now better able to reconstruct the geography, topography, and toponymy of early St. Petersburg. The article is supplemented by the first full-fledged publication of these three cartographic documents.

On the 17th of February 1937, Rainov completed the article titled “Pushkin and the issues of scientific creativity”. Looking into the text of the famous “little tragedy”, “Mozart and Salieri”, gave him an idea that Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri are living images, the poetic symbols of two profoundly different types of creativity. Rainov believed that Pushkin’s observations allowed analyzing various aspects of creative methodology incomparably deeper than it had been ever done in science before and that, guided by these observations, one may understand a lot not only about art but also about scientific creativity. Proceeding from this, outwardly simple, classification, Rainov demonstrated its effectiveness, drawing on the example of creative life of three great scientists: Ch. Darwin, J.-L. Lagrange, and I. P. Pavlov, whom Rainov called the Salieris of science. Unlike many Pushkinists and literary critics, he did not demonize Salieri, the essence of whose creative methodology was that, for him, his innate giftedness was but a material to work on and all of his creativity was a result of conscious reworking of the promptings of inspiration.

In scientific practice, Rainov wrote, the Salieri type scientists – as in Pushkin’s play – are opposed by the Mozarts. Such Mozarts were A.-M. Ampère, a physicist, chemist, mathematician, and philosopher, V. O. Kovalevsky, a paleontologist, geologist, and zoologist, and I. A. Lappo-Danilevsky who was a mathematician. Just as Pushkin did not explain Mozart’s “creative methodology”, for Rainov, the creative paths of Mozart-type scientists remained a mystery and therefore, only a description of personality traits and qualities was given for these individuals, characterized by the quick, lightning-fast insights and intuitive penetration of the mind into the innermost essence, which enables the bearer of a genius mind to create new branches (fields) of science.

It is shown in the introductory article to the publication of Rainov’s text that his first ventures into analytical perusal of Pushkin’s works date back to the early 1920s.

The article proposes a classification and description of the principles of operation of automatic stability control systems of aircrafts of the world in the period prior to the outbreak of WWI, and clarifies priorities in this field. The aircrafts employed the systems based on pendulum sensors, aerodynamic sensors, automatic thrust vector changes, and gyroscopic sensors. It is noted that, because of the outbreak of the First World War, the experiments associated with creating automatic stability systems had to be stopped and the focus was shifted to building mass combat vehicles. The next stage in the development of these systems began only in the 1920s.