Pilchikov Nikolay Dmitrievich General data:
21.05.1957 - 19.05.1908
Place of birth: Poltava city, Poltava province, Russian Empire
Studied in: Imperial Kharkiv University, Kharkiv province, Russian Empire (since 1999 V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv region, Ukraine) (1876-1880);
Key interests: instruments and devices, physics, astronomy, solar corona, theoretical physics, geophysics, meteorology. ScD Thesis: Materials on the issue of local anomalies of terrestrial magnetism (1888 St. Petersburg Imperial University);
Biography:
He was born on May 21 (according to the Gregorian calendar or 9 according to the Julian calendar) of May 1857 in the Poltava city of Poltava province of the Russian Empire, in the family of the famous teacher Dmytro Pylchikov. He had a noble origin. Having lost his mother early (she died when his son was not even a year old), he grew up under the supervision of his father and grandmother. Later, he mastered seven languages perfectly.
Nickolay Pylchikov studied at home until he was fourteen. Since 1871, he continued his further education at the 1st Poltava Boys' Gymnasium, where he was distinguished by his "talent for the sciences", especially physics and chemistry.
While still a high school student, he participated in the enlightenment and liberation movement in Poltava, he was a member of the secret society "Unia", the purpose of which was to fight against the colonial policy of tsarism in Ukraine.
In 1876, after graduating from gymnasium, the young man entered the Imperial Kharkiv University. Already in his second year, he created an electric phonoautograph which is a device for studying sound vibrations graphically. This was the first invention of the future talented scientist, with which he was several decades ahead of foreign researchers, including Edison himself, whose phonograph was mechanical, and he created it later, in 1877 (according to some sources, a year later).
In 1880, he successfully completed the course with the title of candidate and became the only worthy candidate for a scholarship to prepare for the professorship at the physics department. In November 1880, M. D. Pylchikov began working as a scholar at the Department of Physics and Physical Geography. In 1882-1883, he passed the exam for a master's degree and actively engaged in scientific work.
In the civil service since 1881, he climbed the career ladder to the rank of State Counselor.
Conducted research on the Kursk magnetic anomaly in 1883-1884. N.D. Pilchikov hypothesized that the Kursk and Belgorod magnetic anomalies are related to the location of large iron ore reserves there. For this work, he was awarded a silver medal of the Russian Geographical Society, of which he was elected a full member in the 1890s.
In January 1884, N. D. Pylchikov was appointed to the position of an assistant (according to other reports, a freelance laboratory technician), and in December 1885 he became a private associate professor at the Imperial Kharkiv University. During seven years of scientific work, the talented inventor demonstrated nine of his own devices and devices, which were a new word in experimental physics. He also conducted research on magnetic anomalies, theoretical development of the problem of terrestrial magnetism.
In 1888-1889 (according to other sources, 1887-1889) he was in France, where he completed a thorough scientific internship in laboratories under the guidance of outstanding physicists and chemists. In particular, he worked in the physical research laboratory of the University of Paris, headed by G. Lippmann, in the physical laboratory of the College de France under the guidance of N. Mascar, in the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres and in the magnetic observatory of Parc Saint Maur near Paris City.
In 1890, he received a Master's degree in physics and physical geography. According to some sources, in the spring of 1888, he defended his master's thesis at St. Petersburg Imperial University on the topic: "Materials for the question of local anomalies of terrestrial magnetism", in which he laid the foundations of the theory of geomagnetism anomalies and for the first time substantiated the presence of "the richest deposits of iron ore" within the limits of the Kursk magnetic anomaly. It his prediction, as we know, came true.
In 1889 and 1890, N. D. Pilchikov participated in the work of the International Congresses of Meteorologists, which took place in Paris. In 1890, he was one of the founders of the Meteorological Herald magazine.
During 1890–1894, he was an Extraordinary Professor at the Department of Physics. In 1892 he was elected an honorary member of the International Society of Electricians in Paris, in 1894 he was a member of the scientific council of the French Physical Society.
In 1891, he founded a meteorological station, built and equipped it at his own expense. In the 1890s, И.D. Pilchikov began research in the field of atmospheric optics. Later, he experimentally substantiated the reasons for the blue color of the sky, established the dependence of the difference in polarization intensity in blue and red rays on the turbidity of the atmosphere, and also studied in detail the polarization of moonlight scattered by the atmosphere.
In 1892 p. became one of the founders of the T. G. Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv.
During 1894–1902, he was an Extraordinary Professor at the Imperial Novorosian University in Odesa. In eight years, he taught more than ten courses for students of physics and mathematics, and since 1900, medical faculties. He did a lot for the planning and construction of the physics institute at the university, created and headed a separate measuring laboratory. In 1901, he was appointed head of the magnetometeorological observatory and the office of physical geography.
During 1902–1908, he was a professor of physics at the Kharkiv Technological Institute of Emperor Alexander III. Upon his return to Kharkiv, he headed the Physics Department and the Physics Laboratory.
During 1904–1906, he was the head of the physics office and the meteorological observatory.
In 1904, he became a member of the French and Belgian Astronomical Societies.
In order to study the spectral polarization of the sky, he was in Germany in 1904.
In 1905, he managed production measurements of the spectral polarization of the sky in Germany and Algeria.
When conducting studies of the solar eclipse in 1905 in the Philipville city of Algeria, N.D. Pilchikov used a specially designed "photographic telescope"which was commissioned by him and which was produced by the famous French optician Secretan.
During 1903–1908, he was the editor of "News of the Kharkiv Technological Institute of Emperor Alexander III".
In 1905, he gave a speech at the World Congress of Radiology in Liège City.
M.D. Pilchikov studied X-rays immediately after their discovery by V.K. Retgen in November 1895. With the help of Ivan Pulyu's tube, noting in his works that it was the most powerful source of all-pervading invisible radiation, on January 19, 1896 he obtained his first X-promenograms of a frog, crayfish, fish, mouse, beetle and coral.
Since 1907, he was the Chairman of the Meteorological Commission of the Educational Committee of the Kharkiv Technological Institute of Emperor Alexander III.
In 1907, he was elected Honorary Chairman of the Physics Department at the 1st Mendeleev Congress, participated in the 1st Russian Congress of People's University Societies.
In 1907, he was elected a member of the London Faraday Society.
He was also elected full member of the Toulouse Academy of Sciences and Arts (was a corresponding member), the International Society of Electricians, and various other learned societies in Russia, France, Austria, Belgium, Germany, and the North American United States.
He actively popularized the latest achievements of physical science, giving public lectures that gathered thousands of audiences. The scientist worked a lot in the Novorosian Society of Naturalists, which he became a member of in 1895, and in the Odesa branch of the Russian Technical Society. He made a significant contribution to the struggle of progressive professors to open higher women's courses in Odesa City. Since 1898, every summer he went on vacation abroad, where he combined rest and treatment with research, inspection of laboratories, ordering devices. N. D. Pilchikovts owns a number of inventions related to the use of radio in naval affairs, with the creation of a new type of weapon controlled at a distance by radio.
One day he was elected an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
He played the violin perfectly, was fond of painting, wrote poems, translated into Ukrainian several poems by various authors, which were not possible to publish due to the ban on the Ukrainian language, which was in effect until 1905.
19 (according to the Gregorian calendar, or 6 according to the Julian calendar) May 1908, Professor N.D. Pylchikov died tragically from a revolver shot while being treated in a private clinic for the nervous of I.Ya. Platonov who was private associate professor of Kharkiv University . The burial took place at the Ioanno-Usiknovinsky city cemetery in Kharkiv City. Later, he was reburied at cemetery No. 13 in Kharkiv City.
Scientific works are devoted to optics, terrestrial magnetism, electrical and radio engineering, radioactivity, X-rays, electrochemistry and meteorology. The creative legacy of the scientist is about 100 works, more than 25 original devices and installations, several new experimental methods of research.
Main publications:
1. Пильчиков Н. Д. Вступительная лекция по физике, читанная профессором Н. Пильчиковым в Харьковском Технологическом Институте Императора Александра III в 1902 г. / Н. Д. Пильчиков // Известия Харьковского Технологического Института Императора Александра III / ред. проф. Н. Д. Пильчиков. – Харьков : Тип. и Лит. М. Зильберберг и С-вья, 1905. – Т. 1. – С. 1-11.
2. Пильчиков Н. Д. Поляризация неба в Наугейме//Известия Харьковского Технологического Института Императора Александра III, Т. 2, 1906
3. Пильчиков Н. Д. Краткий отчет о летней заграничной командировке//Известия Харьковского Технологического Института Императора Александра III, Т. 3, 1907
4. Пильчиков Н. Д. Памяти французскаго академика Кюри//Известия Харьковского Технологического Института Императора Александра III, Т. 4, 1908
Sources:
1 Біобібліографічний огляд діяльності особового складу
викладачів та інших співробітників ХТІ
2 Творець перших радіокерованих пристроїв/Василь ВЕЛЬМОЖКО//Чорноморські новини, 2022, №41-42
3 Микола Дмитрович Пильчиков – видатний фізик, один з піонерів бездротової телеграфії та основоположник радіокерування
(До 160 річниці з дня народження)/В.П. Пойда, В.І. Білецький, В.В. Нерубенко, К.І. Байрамова, М.І. Боброва, К.О. Мінакова, О.В. Семенов, О.П. Сук, Е.С. Юнаш, О.М. Меньшова//Вісник ХНУ, серія «Фізика», вип. 26, 2017. c. 64-72
4 histpol.pl.ua
