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BIOGRAPHIES OF GREAT SCIENTISTS
Lobachevsky Nikolay Ivanovich. Biography of a scientist
Directory / Biographies of great scientists
In the history of science, it often happens that the true meaning of a scientific discovery is revealed not only many years after this discovery was made, but, what is especially interesting, as a result of research in a completely different field of knowledge. This happened with the geometry proposed by Lobachevsky, which now bears his name. Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky was born on November 20 (December 1), 1792 in the Makaryevsky district of the Nizhny Novgorod province. His father occupied the place of a district architect and belonged to the number of petty officials who received a meager content. The poverty that surrounded him in the first days of his life turned into poverty when his father died in 1797 and his mother, at the age of twenty-five, was left alone with the children without any means. In 1802, she brought three sons to Kazan and assigned them to the Kazan Gymnasium, where the phenomenal abilities of her middle son were quickly noticed. When in 1804 the senior class of the Kazan gymnasium was transformed into a university, Lobachevsky was included in the number of students in the natural science department. The young man studied brilliantly. However, his behavior was noted as unsatisfactory: the teachers did not like "dreamy self-conceit, excessive perseverance, freethinking." The young man received an excellent education. Lectures on astronomy were read by Professor Litroff. He listened to lectures on mathematics by Professor Bartels, a pupil of such a prominent scientist as Carl Friedrich Gauss. It was Bartels who helped Lobachevsky choose geometry as his area of scientific interest. Already in 1811, Lobachevsky received a master's degree, and he was left at the university to prepare for a professorship. In 1814, Lobachevsky received the title of associate professor of pure mathematics, and in 1816 he was awarded a professorship. At this time, Nicholas was mainly engaged in science; but in 1818 he was elected a member of the school committee, which, according to the charter, was supposed to manage all matters relating to the gymnasiums and schools of the district, then subordinated not directly to the trustee, but to the university. Since 1819, Lobachevsky taught astronomy, replacing a teacher who went on a round-the-world voyage. Lobachevsky's administrative activity began in 1820, when he was elected dean. Unfortunately, the university was then headed by Magnitsky, who, to put it mildly, did not contribute to the development of science. Lobachevsky decides to remain silent for the time being. Yanishevsky condemns this behavior of Lobachevsky, but says: “Lobachevsky’s duty as a member of the council was especially difficult morally. Lobachevsky himself never fawned on his superiors, did not try to expose himself to the eyes, did not like this in others either. At a time when the majority members of the council, to please the trustee, was ready for anything, Lobachevsky was silently present at the meetings, silently and signed the minutes of these meetings. But Lobachevsky's silence reached the point that during the time of Magnitsky he did not publish his research on imaginary geometry, although, as is known for certain, he was engaged in them during this period. It seems that Lobachevsky consciously avoided a useless struggle with Magnitsky and saved his strength for future activities, when dawn replaced the night. Such a dawn appeared Musin-Pushkin; at his appearance, all teachers and students in Kazan came to life and stirred, came out of a state of stupor, which lasted about seven years ... On May 3, 1827, the university council elected Lobachevsky as rector, although he was young - he was thirty-three at that time. Despite exhausting practical activities that did not leave a single moment of rest, Lobachevsky never stopped his scientific studies, and during his rectorship published his best works in the Scientific Notes of Kazan University. Probably, even in his student years, Professor Bartels informed the gifted student Lobachevsky, with whom he maintained an active personal relationship until his departure, the idea of his friend Gauss about the possibility of such a geometry where Euclid's postulate does not hold. Reflecting on the postulates of Euclidean geometry, Lobachevsky came to the conclusion that at least one of them could be revised. Obviously, the cornerstone of Lobachevsky's geometry is the negation of Euclid's postulate, without which geometry seemed unable to live for about two thousand years. Based on the assertion that, under certain conditions, lines that seem parallel to us can intersect, Lobachevsky came to the conclusion that it is possible to create a new, consistent geometry. Since its existence was impossible to imagine in the real world, the scientist called it "imaginary geometry." Lobachevsky's first work on this subject was presented to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics in Kazan in 1826; it was published in 1829, and in 1832 a collection of works by Hungarian scientists, father and son Bolyai, appeared on non-Euclidean geometry. Father Bogliai was a friend of Gauss, and, no doubt, he shared with him his thoughts on the new geometry. Meanwhile, it was Lobachevsky's geometry that received the right to citizenship in Western Europe. Although both scientists were elected members of the Hanover Academy of Sciences for this discovery. So Lobachevsky's life went on in scientific studies and in caring for the university. Almost all the time of his service he did not leave the Kazan province; only from October 1836 to January 1837 did he spend in St. Petersburg and Dorpat. In 1840, Lobachevsky traveled with Professor Erdman, a deputy from Kazan University, to Helsingfors to celebrate the university's bicentennial anniversary. In 1842 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Royal Society, but he never left the borders of his fatherland. Lobachevsky married late, at the age of forty-four, to a wealthy Orenburg-Kazan landowner Varvara Alekseevna Moiseeva. As a dowry for his wife, he received, among other things, the small village of Polyanki in the Spassky district of the Kazan province. Subsequently, he bought another estate Slobodka, on the very banks of the Volga, in the same province. Lobachevsky's family life was in full accordance with his general mood and his activities. Pursuing the search for truth in science, he put the truth above all else in life. In the girl he decided to call his wife, he mainly valued honesty, truthfulness and sincerity. They say that before the wedding, the bride and groom gave each other their word of honor to be sincere and kept it. By nature, Lobachevsky's wife was a sharp contrast to her husband: Varvara Alekseevna was unusually lively and quick-tempered. Lobachevsky had four sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Alexei, his father's favorite, very much resembled him in face, height and physique; the youngest son suffered from some kind of brain disease, he could hardly speak and died in the seventh year. Lobachevsky's family life brought him much grief. He loved his children, deeply and seriously cared for them, but he knew how to keep his sorrows within limits and did not get out of balance. In the summer, he gave free time to children and taught them mathematics himself. In these studies he sought rest. He enjoyed nature and took great pleasure in farming. On his estate, Belovolzhskaya Slobodka, he planted a beautiful garden and a grove that has survived to this day. Planting cedars, Lobachevsky sadly told his loved ones that he would not wait for their fruits. This premonition came true: the first pine nuts were removed in the year of Lobachevsky's death, when he was no longer in the world. In 1837 Lobachevsky's works were published in French. In 1840 he published in German his theory of parallels, which deserved the recognition of the great Gauss. In Russia, Lobachevsky did not see the evaluation of his scientific works. Obviously, Lobachevsky's research was beyond the understanding of his contemporaries. Some ignored him, others greeted his work with rude ridicule and even scolding. While our other highly talented mathematician Ostrogradsky enjoyed well-deserved fame, no one knew Lobachevsky; Ostrogradsky himself treated him either mockingly or hostilely. Quite correctly, or rather, thoroughly, one geometer called Lobachevsky's geometry stellar geometry. One can form an idea of infinite distances if one remembers that there are stars from which light reaches the Earth for thousands of years. So, the geometry of Lobachevsky includes the geometry of Euclid not as a particular, but as a special case. In this sense, the first can be called a generalization of the geometry known to us. Now the question arises, does Lobachevsky own the invention of the fourth dimension? Not at all. The geometry of four and many dimensions was created by the German mathematician, a student of Gauss, Riemann. The study of the properties of spaces in a general form now constitutes non-Euclidean geometry, or the geometry of Lobachevsky. The Lobachevsky space is a space of three dimensions, which differs from ours in that the postulate of Euclid does not take place in it. The properties of this space are now being understood by assuming a fourth dimension. But this step already belongs to the followers of Lobachevsky. Naturally, the question arises, where is such a space. The answer to it was given by the greatest physicist of the XX century Albert Einstein. Based on the works of Lobachevsky and Riemann's postulates, he created the theory of relativity, which confirmed the curvature of our space. According to this theory, any material mass curves the surrounding space. Einstein's theory was repeatedly confirmed by astronomical observations, as a result of which it became clear that Lobachevsky's geometry is one of the fundamental ideas about the Universe around us. In the last years of his life, Lobachevsky was haunted by all kinds of grief. His eldest son, who had a great resemblance to his father, died a university student; he showed the same unbridled impulses that distinguished his father in early youth. The state of the Lobachevskys, according to his son, was upset by the not entirely successful purchase of the estate. Lobachevsky bought the latter, counting on his wife's capital, which was in the hands of her brother, a passionate player, theatergoer and poet. The brother lost his sister's money at cards along with his own. And Lobachevsky, despite all his hatred of debt, was forced to borrow; the house in Kazan was also mortgaged. The surviving children of Lobachevsky brought him little consolation. In 1845, he was unanimously elected rector of the university for a new four-year term, and in 1846, on May 7, the five-year term of his service as an honored professor ended. The Council of Kazan University came back again with a request to keep Lobachevsky in the professorship for another five years. Despite this, due to some dark intrigue, the ministry refused. On top of that, Lobachevsky also lost financially. When he lost his professorship, he had to be content with a pension, which, under the old charter, was 1 rubles and 142 canteen rubles. Lobachevsky continued to perform his duties as rector without receiving any remuneration. Lobachevsky's activity in the last decade of his life was, in its intensity, only a shadow of the past. Deprived of his chair, Lobachevsky lectured on his geometry to a select scientific public, and those who heard them remember the thoughtfulness with which he developed his principles. These fatal years were followed by years of decline for Lobachevsky; he began to go blind. Of course, nothing is able to give happiness in the years of the destruction of forces, but better conditions can alleviate this grief. Not seeing people around him imbued with his ideas, Lobachevsky thought that these ideas would perish with him. Dying, he said bitterly: "And man was born to die." He died on February 12 (24), 1856. Author: Samin D.K.
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