BIOGRAPHIES OF GREAT SCIENTISTS
Ostrogradsky Mikhail Vasilievich. Biography of a scientist Directory / Biographies of great scientists
Mikhail Vasilievich Ostrogradsky was born on September 12 (24), 1801 in the village of Pashennaya, Kobelyaksky district, Poltava province, in the family of a poor landowner. In 1816, he entered the Physics and Mathematics Department of Kharkov University and soon began to surprise everyone with his extraordinary success in the study of mathematics. The rector of the university, professor T. F. Osipovsky, a talented mathematician and an outstanding teacher, drew attention to Mikhail. He won over a promising young man and supervised his studies. In October 1818, Ostrogradsky graduated from Kharkov University, and in 1820 he successfully passed the exams for the title of candidate of science. Before him, it seemed, opened a direct road to the university professorship. However, Ostrogradsky did not receive a degree, and the reason for this was the sharp ideological struggle that unfolded in Kharkov and other universities in Russia, caused by the onset of reaction in the last years of the reign of Alexander I. Education and universities became the first victims of the reaction. T. F. Osipovsky, a favorite of the progressive students, a man of frankly materialistic convictions, fell out of favor. He was dismissed, at the same time striking a blow to his like-minded people and fans. One of the first went to his best student Ostrogradsky, who was informed that he did not attend lectures on philosophy and on "knowledge of God and Christian teaching", which is mandatory for all students. On this insignificant, far-fetched basis, he was not only denied the degree of Candidate of Sciences, but was also deprived of his university diploma. This was an unheard-of mockery of the future scientist, whose talent was noticed even then. Fortunately, the obscurantists did not succeed in ruining Ostrogradsky's talent. On the contrary, his love for mathematics was greatly strengthened in him, and he decided to continue his studies in Paris under the guidance of the outstanding mathematicians of the Polytechnic School. He arrives there in May 1822. At the Polytechnic School, the Sorbonne, the College de France, he listened to lectures by the famous scientists Cauchy, Fourier, Laplace, Monge, Poisson, Legendre Sturm, Poncelet, Wien and others, who paved new paths in mathematical analysis, mathematical physics and mechanics. Having studied and assimilated the results achieved by the French mathematical school, Ostrogradsky himself began to deal with important and topical issues of that time, often ahead of his Parisian colleagues. The outstanding abilities of the young scientist soon received fairly wide recognition. Thus, Cauchy, in a memoir published in the journal of the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1825, speaks with praise of Ostrogradsky's first scientific research on the calculation of integrals. Cauchy wrote: "... one Russian young man, gifted with great insight and very skillful in calculating infinitesimals, Ostrogradsky, also resorting to the use of the same integrals and converting them into ordinary ones, gave a new proof of the formulas I mentioned above, and generalized other formulas , placed by me in the 19th notebook of the Polytechnic School. Mr. Ostrogradsky kindly informed me of the main results of his work. " In 1826, the Russian scientist presented his first scientific work to the Paris Academy of Sciences - "A Memoir on the Propagation of Waves in a Cylindrical Basin", highly appreciated by Cauchy and published in the proceedings of the Academy. The scientific significance of this work can be judged at least by the fact that back in 1816 the academy announced a special competition for its solution. In 1824-1827, Ostrogradsky submitted several more memoirs. These works strengthened the scientific reputation of the young scientist and won him the friendship and respect of many French mathematicians. But Mikhail Vasilyevich is inexorably drawn to his homeland, where his successes were well known. No wonder young people who went to study abroad, relatives and friends admonished with the words: "Become Ostrograd". In 1828 he left for Russia. This trip was hard. On the way he was robbed, and he had to travel from Frankfurt am Main to St. Petersburg on foot. The “Russian pedestrian”, who was also making his way from abroad, looked very suspicious, and the dubious authorities, who everywhere seemed to be uprisings of the Decembrists, established secret police supervision over him. Probably, Ostrogradsky did not know about this until the end of his days. Immediately after Ostrogradsky's arrival in St. Petersburg, his fruitful work at the Academy of Sciences and vigorous pedagogical activity began. The Academy of Sciences highly appreciated the scientific activity of Ostrogradsky: in August 1830 he was elected extraordinary, and a year later - an ordinary academician in applied mathematics. From that time on, his life was full of creative successes, and his activity was marked by the assignment of a number of honorary academic titles. Thus, in 1834 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Sciences, in 1841 a member of the Turin Academy, in 1853 a member of the Lynch Academy of Rome and in 1856 a corresponding member of the Paris Academy. Ostrogradsky's scientific interests were determined early, even before his departure for Paris. In an explanation to the council of Kharkov University, Ostrogradsky wrote back in 1820 that he wanted to "improve himself in terms of the sciences related to applied mathematics." Indeed, he devoted many of his works to mathematical physics and mechanics, becoming one of those who laid the foundation for these sciences. Ostrogradskii wrote fifteen papers on mathematical physics. Most of them relate to the problems of heat propagation, the theory of elasticity, and hydrodynamics. His work on the theory of heat is of the greatest scientific importance. These studies, in addition to containing the most important results directly related to the theory of heat propagation, are of great general mathematical significance. On the one hand, they laid the foundations for a number of important theories developing in our time, and on the other hand, they contain theorems that are one of the central ones in mathematical analysis. Ostrogradsky was the first Russian scientist to study analytical mechanics. He owns first-class research on methods of integrating the equations of analytical mechanics and the development of generalized principles of statics and dynamics. The most outstanding studies of Ostrogradsky relate to generalizations of the basic principles and methods of mechanics. He made a significant contribution to the development of variational principles. The variational principles of mechanics are among the questions that interested the scientist throughout his life. The constant return to the calculus of variations and the variational principles of mechanics makes him related to Lagrange, one of the creators of the calculus of variations and the creator of analytical mechanics. Ostrogradsky studied the problems of analytical mechanics in the most general form. Such a formulation of the question led, in turn, to the study of the calculus of variations, which, as a special case, includes dynamics. Ostrogradsky's memoir "On Differential Equations Relating to the Problem of Isoperimeters", published in the "Proceedings" of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1850, belongs equally to mechanics and the calculus of variations. By virtue of this approach, Ostrogradsky's research in mechanics significantly enriched and developed the understanding of variational principles, primarily from a mathematical point of view. Therefore, the integral-variational principle formulated by Hamilton is rightly called the Hamilton-Ostrogradsky principle. His works on mechanics, including "Lectures on Analytical Mechanics" and "Course of Celestial Mechanics", were the foundation on which the Russian school of mechanics was built and developed. Ostrogradskii's works on mathematical analysis were in most cases inspired by his research in mathematical physics and mechanics: they provide solutions to mathematical questions posed by the theoretical natural sciences of that time. Thus, in connection with studies of the propagation of heat in a solid body, he obtained the famous formula, which is now included in all textbooks of mathematical analysis under the name of the Ostrogradsky-Green formula. At present, this formula plays a huge role in mathematical physics, vector analysis, and other branches of mathematics and its applications. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Ostrogradskii also made an outstanding contribution to the field of mathematical analysis. His results have entered modern mathematics as an essential and inseparable part of it, and they represent that necessary weapon, without which mathematics can no longer do without. Ostrogradsky's interests also included algebra, number theory, and probability theory. According to N. E. Zhukovsky, "in the works of M. V. Ostrogradsky, we are attracted by the generality of analysis, the main idea, as wide as the expanse of his native fields." Ostrogradsky rendered an invaluable service to Russian science, raising a galaxy of talented students who later became outstanding representatives of Russian science. Among them, I. A. Vyshnegradsky - the founder of the theory of automatic control; N. P. Petrov - the creator of the hydrodynamic theory of lubrication and the author of classical studies on the theory of mechanisms, A. N. Tikhomandritsky, E. I. Beyer, D. M. Delarue, E. F. Sabinin - professors of mathematics and many other mathematicians and outstanding engineers. Over the years, Ostrogradsky taught in the officer classes at the Naval Cadet Corps, was a professor at the Institute of the Corps of Railway Engineers, the best technical educational institution in the country at that time. He lectured at the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Main Pedagogical Institute, where D. I. Mendeleev, N. A. Dobrolyubov, I. A. Vyshnegradsky studied. Since 1841, he taught in the officer classes of the Main Artillery and Main Engineering Schools. Ostrogradsky remained a professor at all these educational institutions until the end of his life. On the basis of curricula, programs and notes drawn up with the participation and under the guidance of Ostrogradsky, educational guides in the mathematical sciences for military educational institutions were compiled. In 1852, lectures on analytical mechanics were published in a lithographed edition, which Ostrogradsky read at the Main Pedagogical Institute. These lectures were of great importance for the spread of physical and mathematical sciences in Russia. Ostrogradsky's exposition is original in many respects. He searched in mechanics for the simplest and most general principles that would make it possible to prove its theorems in the most elegant, concise and simple way. The students enthusiastically greeted Ostrogradsky's new course. One of the students of the Institute of Railway Engineers V. A. Panaev, later a major engineer, recalled: “The work by which Ostrogradsky immortalized himself by solving the main question of the highest world science of motion, which had not been resolved before by any of the former great geometers, than crowned this science completely, and such and such a classic work in its entirety, as a separate essay, which the scientific world was looking forward to, did not appear in print. Why did this essay not appear? All for the same reason: Ostrogradsky did not have material means " . Ostrogradsky also wrote several textbooks and a three-volume "Guide to Elementary Geometry". He was a strong supporter of the introduction of the idea of function in the upper secondary schools and began analysis. On his initiative, elements of higher mathematics were introduced in the cadet corps in 1850. He went even further and argued that the basic concepts of higher mathematics should become the property of wide circles of literate people. Ostrogradsky persistently sought to ensure that the teaching of mathematics and mechanics was linked with physics and natural science. Thus, there is every reason to conclude that in a number of points Ostrogradsky anticipated the ideas of the well-known international movement for the reform of teaching that arose in the XNUMXth century. Ostrogradskii's pedagogical interests were not limited to questions of mathematics teaching methodology. He was deeply interested in the general problems of upbringing and education, which he was especially fond of in the last years of his life. Noteworthy in this regard is his essay "Reflections on Teaching", written jointly with the French mathematician A. Bloom. The ideas expressed in it are so fresh and interesting that, if this pamphlet appeared in our days, it would be perceived by the reader as a fascinating pedagogical essay, talking about quite modern pedagogical problems. Ostrogradsky's intensive work continued at the Academy of Sciences for over thirty years; during this time, his memoirs were placed in each volume of the "Notes" of the Academy. The contents of these memoirs were previously reported at meetings of the academy. He gave feedback on studies sent to the academy, read cycles of public lectures. The scientist took an active part in the work of various commissions of the Academy of Sciences: on the introduction of the Gregorian calendar and on the astronomical determination of the places of the empire, on the study of the possibility of using electromagnetism for the movement of ships according to the method proposed by B. S. Jacobi, on the introduction of the decimal system of measures, weights and coins and others. Mikhail Vasilyevich Ostrogradsky died in Poltava on December 20, 1861 (according to the new style - January 1, 1862). Author: Samin D.K. We recommend interesting articles Section Biographies of great scientists: See other articles Section Biographies of great scientists. Read and write useful comments on this article. Latest news of science and technology, new electronics: Machine for thinning flowers in gardens
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