Kozyrev Nikolay Alexandrovich General data:
02.09.1908 - 27.02.1983
Place of birth: St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg province, Russian Empire
Studied in: Leningrad State University (since 1991 St. Petersburg State University) (1924-1928);
Key interests: solar physics, general theory of relativity, theoretical astrophysics, stellar photospheres, internal structure of stars, sources of stellar energy, physics of planets, exploration of the Moon. PhD Thesis: Without the defense of the dissertation he was awarded the degree of candidate of astronomy and geodesy (1932 ); ScD Thesis: Sources of Stellar Energy and the Theory of the internal structure of stars (1947 Leningrad Order of Lenin State University);
Biography:
He was born on August 20 (Julian calendar or September 2 Gregorian calendar) in 1908 in St. Petersburg of St. Petersburg province of the Russian Empire in the family of a nobleman who, according to some sources, came from the Samara peasants, worked as a mining engineer and later became a full-fledged state councilor. His mother was from the Shikhobalov merchant family.
A 17-year-old St. Petersburg schoolboy published an article in a scientific journal. His first professional work was published in the scientific notes of the English Astronomical Society.
In the summer of 1917 the family moved from Petrograd city to Samara city.
There is evidence that he took part in a group of young "world scientists" at the Russian Society of World Science Lovers, which was organized in 1921 on the initiative of V. V. Sharonov. This group, which operated in the 1920s, became a real school, where many young people who chose astronomy as their future specialty received their first knowledge of the universe. Young people were given the opportunity to conduct scientific work, using the advice of great experts, the library, the equipment of society. The guy was one of the three most active students in the circle.
After graduating from high school in 1924 he entered the A. I. Herzen Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, then, at the insistence of professors, moved to the astronomical department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Leningrad State University, graduating in 1928 and became a graduate student of the Main Astronomical USSR Observatory in Pulkovo urban village. His supervisor was A. A. Belopolsky.
He worked at the Leningrad Institute of Railway Engineers, and then at the M. M. Pokrovsky Pedagogical Institute. In 1931 he became a professor at the institute, where he lectured on the theory of relativity. Graduation, the same year he was enrolled together with V. A. Ambartsumyan in the observatory staff of the first category. Since 1931 he became an employee of the Pulkovo Observatory as a specialist of the first category.
In 1932, without defending his dissertation, he was awarded the degree of Candidate of Astronomy and Geodesy.
Due to a conflict with the director on March 8, 1936 he was dismissed from the Pulkovo Observatory.
November 7, 1936 at the age of 28, he was arrested and May 25, 1937 sentenced to ten years in prison in the "Pulkovo case" of 1936-1937. Close relatives also suffered a difficult fate - exile, because they are not renounced the "enemy of the people." After a court sentence until May 1939, he served his "sentence" at the Orel headquarters, and then sent to Siberia in Noriysk city. In January 1940 he was transferred to the Dudyn Permafrost Station, where he worked as an exploration geologist, using his own method for determining the depth of magnetic ore: determine the gradient with a magnetometer and determine the depth of magnetic ore by gradient. From December of the same year he worked as the head of the permafrost station in the center of the Evenki taiga, holding this position, having been a detainee since the spring. On January 25, 1941, while in the Norian prison, he received a second 10-year term, allegedly for hostile agitation among prisoners, survived the horror of the threat of execution. After the trial he was appointed to work at the metallurgical plant as a heat control engineer. In the spring of 1943, due to ill health, he was transferred to work in the Geological Survey of the Norilsk Plant as a geophysical engineer. Until March 1945 he worked as a foreman of the expedition to Khantai Lake and chief of the Northern Magnetic Exploration Detachment of the Lower Tunguska Geological Expedition.
Even after two years in the taiga in harsh weather conditions and as if a "desert island", he did not leave the scientific work on the study of stars. Here, too, the scientist developed a theory of time, which is the next step after what Newton did and what Einstein did.
When S. I. Vavilov became the director of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Shine G. A. and Ambartsumyan V. A. initiated a petition to review the "Pulkovo case". But he and Yu. A. Krutkov were the only ones who were lucky enough to survive: all more than 50 people arrested and convicted in this fabricated case during this political repression were shot or killed in the camps. After reviewing the case in Moscow during 1945-1946, he finally received parole on February 14, 1946, with a ban on living in major cities except Leningrad and the Crimea. After his release, he went to Leningrad, and then went to the Crimea, where he worked at the Astrophysical Observatory of the USSR Academy of Sciences until 1958 (according to some sources, until August 1947). Miraculously, he escaped re-arrest in 1949, which was not avoided by Yu.A. Krutkov.
In March 1947 he defended his doctoral dissertation at Leningrad State University on "Sources of stellar energy and the theory of the internal structure of stars".
In September 1947 he was invited as a lecturer in astronomy at the A. I. Herzen Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, where he worked for two years. (In 1957, the M. M. Pokrovsky Leningrad Pedagogical Institute was merged with the A. I. Herzen Institute).
On February 21, 1958, the theoretical astrophysicist was completely rehabilitated. Returning to Leningrad, he worked at the Pulkovo Observatory. On April 10, 1979, he was fired from the observatory on redundancy.
Father of three (according to some four) sons, although not officially married.
He died on February 27, 1983 in Leningrad city and was buried at the Pulkovo observatory cemetery.
The main scientific works are devoted to the physics of stars, the study of planets and the moon. In 1933, together with V. A. Ambartsumyan, first calculated the mass of the ejected shell of a new star, which suddenly turned out to be very small, about one hundred thousand times less than the mass of the Sun. In 1934 he developed the theory of long atmospheres and established a number of properties of their radiation. This theory was later generalized by S. Chandrasekar in the case when the density in the photosphere changes according to the law ρ=r-n, and was called the Kozyrev-Chandrasekar theory (n = 2 is a case considered by Kozyrev N. A. primary). It is of interest in the interpretation of luminosity curves with variables that characterize eclipses, the components of which are supergiants. He developed the theory of sunspots on the assumption that the spot is in radial equilibrium with the observed photosphere. The depth of sunspots found by scientists, which is 5,000 km, is considered the most acceptable.
In 1953, he invented a number of emission bands in the spectrum of the dark part of the Venus disk, two of which were attributed to molecular nitrogen. In 1958, he received spectrograms of Alphonse Crater on the Moon, which testify to the release of gas from the central hill of the crater and volcanic phenomena on the Moon. Back in 1959, a few years before the first space expedition to the moon, he predicted the absence of the moon's magnetic field, which was confirmed by measurements made by "Moon-1". In 1963, based on a comparative study of the contours of hydrogen lines in the spectra of Mercury and the Sun, he discovered hydrogen in the atmosphere of Mercury.
He came to the conclusion that the temperature in the center of Jupiter is close to 2×10 5C°. He gave an interesting interpretation of the problem of the structure of stars, based on the assumption that the middle of the stars contains only hydrogen, and concluded that the internal energy of stars, contrary to popular belief, can not be explained only by thermonuclear reactions. He also developed a hypothesis about the influence of running time on the energy of cosmic bodies, believing that "time releases additional energy, without which the stars have long since gone out." In addition to the conclusion that time has energy, absorbs and radiates it, came the Frenchman Blondel, and Kozyrev N. A. confirmed.
He also won the Bredikhin Prize of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1970 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the International Academy of Astronautics.
The asteroid 2536 Kozyrev and the Kozyrev crater on the Moon, which was discovered by G. N. Neuimin on August 15, 1939 at the Simeiz Observatory, got his name.
Main publications:
1. Козырев Н. А. Избранные труды. — Л.: Изд-во Ленинградского университета, 1991. — 447 с.
2. Курс астрофизики и звездной астрономии Ч. 1. Методы астрофизических и астрофотографический исследований. /В.А. Амбарцумян, И.А. Балановский, А.А. Белопольский, Б.П. Герасимович, Н.А. Козырев, С.К. Костинский, Е.Я. Перепелкин, В.Г. Фесенков, Г.А. Шайн.-ОНТИ, главная редакция общетехнической литературы, 1934, 342с.
3. Курс астрофизики и звездной астрономии Ч. 2. Физика солнечной системы и звездная астрономия /В.А. Амбарцумян, И.А. Балановский, А.А. Белопольский, Б.П. Герасимович, Н.А. Козырев, С.К. Костинский, Е.Я. Перепелкин, В.Г. Фесенков, Г.А. Шайн.-Ленинград - Москва:ОНТИ, главная редакция общетехнической литературы, 1936, 580с.
4. Козырев Н. А. Избранные труды. — Л.: Изд-во Ленинградского университета, 1991. — 447 с.
Sources:
1 Hockey T., Trimble V., Williams Th. R., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astro-nomers. — New York: Springer, 2007.—Vol. 1, 2.—1341 p.- P. 654-655
2 Колчинский И. Г., Корсунь А. А., Родригес М. Г. Астрономы: Биографический справочник. — Киев: Наук. думка, 1986.—510 с.-Сю 157-158
3 Зигель Ф. Ю. Русские астрономы и их работы.-1949.- 65 с. -С. 54
4 Колтовой Н. А. Книга 5. Часть 14. Новая физика.-С.51-52
