Orlov Alexander Yakovich General data:
06.04.1880 - 28.01.1954
Place of birth: Smolensk City, Smolensk province, Russian empire
Studied in: St. Petersburg Imperial University (since 1991 St. Petersburg State University ) (1898-1902);
Key interests: theoretical astronomy, minor bodies of the Solar System, astrometry, Earth's rotation, seismology. PhD Thesis: Physical conditions in the atmosphere Cephei and other supergiants of spectral type M
Biography:
He was born on April 6, 1880 in Smolensk city of Smolensk Province of the Russian Empire (now the Smolensk Region of the Russian Federation) in the family of a priest where he was the thirteenth child. From the age of 11 he was brought up in a family of distant relatives, the well-known Witte family in Russia.
In 1894 he entered the Voronezh Classical Gymnasium.
During 1898-1902 he studied at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. In the summer of 1901, as a student of the university, he began his career: he worked at the Pulkovo Observatory.
In 1902, after graduating from university with a first degree, he was left at the university to prepare for a professorship and sent on an internship abroad. During 1903-1904 he studied mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy at the Sorbonne University (France). He spent the first half of 1905 in Germany, where he worked in the field of geophysics, mainly in seismology in Göttingen, and in the autumn of 1905 he did an internship in Sweden.
Returning to his homeland at the end of 1905, he got a job as an assistant at the Astronomical Observatory of St. George's University (now the Institute of Astrophysics and Atmospheric Physics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences in Tartu, formerly St. George's). He worked under the direction of G. V. Levitsky at a seismic station.
In 1907 he was appointed calculator of the Pulkovo Observatory, where he observed stars on a large zenith telescope to study the oscillations of the pole, and in 1908 he was elected astronomer-observer of the Astronomical Observatory of St. George's University, where he studied the deformations of the globe. under the influence of lunar gravity.
In 1910 he defended his master's dissertation at St. Petersburg University, and in the same year he was elected a member of the Standing Seismic Commission at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The commission also sent him to the International Seismological Congress held in 1911 in Manchester (England). Here, the scientist was elected a member of the International Committee for the Study of Earth Deformations and in the same year visited the York Observatory in the United States to study photographs of comets.
In 1912, the scientist took part in an expedition to Western Siberia on the Irtysh, Ob and Biya rivers from Tobolsk city to Biysk city. The purpose of the expedition was to measure the force of gravity in different parts of Siberia. In the same year, 1912, on behalf of the International Seismic Bureau, he organized the construction gravimetric station in Tomsk сшен, where in 1913 began observations with horizontal pendulums over the moon's gravity.
In 1912 he was invited to head the Department of Astronomy and director of the Astronomical Observatory of the Imperial Novorossiysk University(now II Mechnikov Odessa National University), and the following years of life and work of the scientist are associated with Odessa.
In 1915 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Astronomy and Geophysics.
In 1917 he defended his dissertation at Odessa State University 'Physical conditions in the atmospheres of Cephei and other supergiants of spectral class M'.
In 1922-1928 pp. conducted work on the study of tides in the Black Sea, on the study of the influence of the Moon on the speed and direction of the wind.
In the summer of 1924 he personally participated in the choice of location for the latitudinal station in Irkutsk. Latitudinal observations in Irkutsk were organized on the initiative. In 1926, the University of Irkutsk allocated a building for the observatory on the northeastern outskirts of the city on 1st Soviet Street (in pre-revolutionary times - Jerusalem Street).
In 1927 he was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In 1939 he was elected an academician of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences (a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences). He was the first academician-astronomer of the NAS of Ukraine.
During 1913 - 1934 pp. he worked as the director of the astronomical observatory and a professor at the University of Odessa City.
During 1934-1938 he worked at the P. K. Sternbsrg State Astronomical Institute and at the Geodetic Institute.
He founded the Poltava Gravimetric Observatory and was its director during 1926-1934 and 1938-1951.
Also during 1939-1941 he was the director of the Carpathian Astronomical Observatory, gave a lot of energy to its revival.
During 1944-1948 and 1950-1951 he was director of the Main Astronomical Observatory of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences. He was the head of the observatory construction project.
He died on January 28, 1954 in Kyiv City(according to other sources in Moscow City). He was buried in Lukyanov Cemetery in Kyiv City.
He was married with Aksentyeva Z. N. and had 6 children.
Areas of his scientific work are astrometry, the study of the laws of rotation of the Earth, the study of the motion of the Earth's poles to change the latitudes of the study of lunisolar tidal deformations of the Earth, theoretical astronomy, seismometry and magnetometry. He proposed formulas for determining the coordinates of comet tail particles.
A. Ya. Orlov considered the problem of latitude changes and the movement of the Earth's poles as a complex problem of astronomy, geodesy and geophysics. He discovered non-polar changes in latitude and proposed a technique for determining and compensating for such changes by calculating the coordinates of the Earth's poles for 1892-1952. In 1951, he developed a method of determining the coordinates of the pole based on the observations of one station.
The scientist also developed new methods of gravimetry which is a science that studies the gravitational field of the Earth, and created gravimetric maps of Ukraine, the European part of Russia, Siberia and the Altai and linked them into a single grid.
Main publications:
1. Орлов А. Я., Орлов Б. А. Курс теоретической астрономии.- М.: Наука, 1966. - 592 с.
2. Орлов А. Я. О теории сейсмических приборов, 1904
3. Орлов А. Я. Об определении поправок элементов планетных и кометных орбит, 1906
4. Орлов А. Я. Об исследовании сейсмограмм пе-риодического маятника, 1909
Sources:
1 Федоров Е.П./А.Я. Орлов.//Земля и Вселенная, 1980, №5, с.42-44
2 Колчинский И. Г., Корсунь А. А., Родригес М. Г. Астрономы: Биографический справочник. — Киев: Наук. думка, 1986.—510 с.-239-240
3 Штауде Н. М. Воспоминания об А. Я. Орлове // Историко-астрономические исследования.—2010.—Вып. 35.—С. 380—383.
4 Аксентьева З. Н. Очерк жизни и творчества А. Я. Орлова // А. Я. Орлов. Избранные труды. — Киев: АН УССР, 1961.—Т. 1.—С. 7—37.
