Boris A. Bakhmetev [1] (May 1 ( 13 ), 1880 (according to other sources July 20 ( August 1 )) [2] , Tiflis - July 21, 1951 , Brookfield, Connecticut , USA ) - Russian and American scientists in the field of hydrodynamics, Political and public figure.
| Boris Alexandrovich Bakhmetev | |
|---|---|
 Boris Bakhmetev in 1918. | |
| Date of Birth | May 1 (13), 1880 |
| Place of Birth | Tiflis , Russian Empire |
| Date of death | July 21, 1951 (71 years old) |
| A place of death | Brookfield, Connecticut , USA |
| A country |  Russian Empire →  USA |
| Scientific field | Hydrodynamics |
| Place of work | St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute , Columbia University |
| Alma mater | Petersburg Institute of Railway Engineers |
| Known as | scientist in the field of applied hydrodynamics, founder of the Bakhmetyev Foundation of Columbia University, prominent public figure of Russian emigration to the USA |
Biography
Born in 1880 in Tiflis. His older brother is the headquarters officer for errands under the head of the Main Directorate of Military Educational Institutions Nikolai Alexandrovich Bakhmetev (1874—?) [3] [4] .
He graduated from the Tiflis classical gymnasium with a gold medal (1898), then in 1902 the St. Petersburg Institute of Railway Engineers . In 1903, he continued his education at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute . In 1904 he continued his studies and practice in the USA, participated in the construction of the Erie Canal [5] . In 1911 he defended his doctoral dissertation at the Institute of Railway Engineers.
He was fond of Marxism, in 1906 he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP from the Menshevik fraction [6] .
From 1905 to 1917 he was a professor in the departments of hydraulics, hydropower, theoretical and applied mechanics of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute .
Community Activities
From the beginning of the First World War, B. A. Bakhmetev began to engage in social and political activities: in 1915 he joined the work of the International Red Cross in the territory of the Russian Empire; He was a member of the Military Industrial Committee and the Purchasing Commission, which was engaged in organizing the supply of equipment for the Russian army from the United States and Great Britain.
In 1917, Bakhmetev became a fellow (deputy) Minister of Trade and Industry of the Provisional Government .
He initiated the creation in the United States of the Russian Humanitarian Fund (“ Bakhmetev Humanitarian Fund ” [7] ), which he led for many years. The documents of various nature, including diplomatic ones, of the Russian emigration, which he collected for a long time, formed the basis of the archive of Russian and East European history and culture of Columbia University of the USA, which he later named. He was also the director of a fund to help Russian students organized with his participation.
The mission of Bakhmetev. Russian Ambassador to the United States
In April 1917, the Provisional Government assigned Bakhmetev an emergency diplomatic mission to negotiate a loan from the US government for the purchase of agricultural equipment and implements. Bahmetev was appointed the head of the mission; as a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture, N. A. Borodin was included in its composition. The mission departed through Vladivostok to the Pacific coast of the United States, from where it moved to Chicago with a special train. The arrival of the Russian delegation and stay in the largest cities of America, including New York, Washington and Boston, were widely and very favorably covered in the American press [8] .
| The new ambassador traveled to the United States through Japan. We were wondering what kind of diplomat the Provisional Government was sending to represent itself abroad. Bakhmetev showed himself to be an intelligent and brilliant man, but he was very different from our ideas about a Russian diplomat. <...> Bakhmetev was accompanied by about fifty people from various ministries with their wives, secretaries and even secretary friends. Everyone had a very high salary, impossible in tsarist Russia. [9] |
In June 1917, the mission was transformed into the Russian Embassy in the United States, and Bakhmetev was appointed ambassador of the Provisional Government to the United States [8] . After the October Revolution in Russia, Bakhmetev remained in the United States and, formally remaining an ambassador (in fact, the Soviet government was represented by Ludwig Martens in the United States in 1919-1921) [10] , he continued his activities in the Purchasing Commission and in the work of the Russian Information Bureau in New York [ 11] . Since Congress criticized the US government for supporting Russian diplomats, who no longer represented the real government of Russia, on June 30, 1922, Bahmetev resigned. He took care of emigrants who arrived from Russia to the United States, including he helped to equip such outstanding scientists as V. Zvorykin , O. Struve , I. Sikorsky , S. Timoshenko in the United States.
Bakhmetev took an active part in the development of draft documents for the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-1920.
Scientific activity
After the signing of the Rapallo Treaty between Soviet Russia and Germany in 1922, Bakhmetev returned to scientific and engineering activities. In 1923, he opened a consulting company in New York on the design of hydraulic systems, and he was one of the founders of a number of other firms of a scientific and technical nature. Bakhmetev worked most closely with the match factory Lion Match Co, in which he was one of the founders and chairman of the board of the company. A small company was soon able to enter the list of the largest US match firms, and the proceeds from this allowed Bakhmetev to return to scientific activity. Bakhmetev allocated a lot of this money to charity, financed the New Journal and the Russian Children's Home.
At the same time, he was engaged in research on hydrodynamics - he studied variable fluid flows in the hydraulics laboratory of Columbia University of New York. He refused a salary in exchange for the possibility of using a university laboratory. At that time, the theory of engineering in the USA was underestimated and Bakhmetev became a reformer in this field. Since 1931, he became a professor in the department of civil engineering at this university. Bakhmetev was one of the first to apply the methods of aerodynamics in hydrodynamics, which opened up new prospects in the development of this science of fluid flow. In 1945, Bakhmetev became one of the founders of the Engineering Fund, as well as its chairman [12] .
He wrote such widely known scientific works on hydrodynamics: “Variable fluid flows” (1914), “Hydraulics of open channels” (1923), “Mechanics of turbulent motion” (1936) - the last book combines his lectures given to engineers at Princeton [13] . A number of his books were translated into Russian and published in the USSR, but without attribution, and used in universities [14] . In the mid-1940s, Bakhmetev became one of the founding members of the American National Foundation for Scientific Research, and he was also a member of the National Foreign Policy Council, the Association for the Advancement of Science, the Academy of Sciences of New York and Connecticut Historians.
Scientific Awards
For his work, "Mechanics of Turbulent Motion," Bakhmetev was awarded the Grand Medal of the Society of Chartered Engineers of France. He was also the winner of the prizes J. Laurie (1937) and J. Stevens (1944), which were awarded to him for his merits in the development of applied science.
In 1945, he was elected an honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, of which he had been a member since 1917. He was also a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Institute of Aerospace Sciences.
Bakhmetev was an amateur and collector of the works of Russian painters (in his collection was a picture of Zinaida Serebryakova “Sleeping Girl on a Red Blanket” ), and also collected Russian icons.
Memory
Bakhmetev’s humanitarian foundation and the Bakhmetev’s archive of Russian and East European history and culture of Columbia University are named after Bakhmetev.
Family
He was married to Elena Mikhailovna Speranskaya [15] . The second marriage - at Mary Helander Cole, in 1938 [16] .
Notes
- ↑ Bakhmetev / O. V. Budnitsky // “Banquet Campaign” 1904 - Big Irgiz. - M .: Big Russian Encyclopedia, 2005. - P. 122. - ( Big Russian Encyclopedia : [in 35 vols.] / Ch. Ed. Yu. S. Osipov ; 2004—2017, vol. 3). - ISBN 5-85270-331-1 .
- ↑ BAKHMETEV • Great Russian Encyclopedia - electronic version . bigenc.ru. Date of treatment March 30, 2019.
- ↑ Bakhmetev Nikolai Alexandrovich
- ↑ His wife, Lyubov Ivanovna Bakhmeteva, was the owner of five plots in Kuokkala .
- ↑ Boris Aleksandrovich Bakhmetyev .
- ↑ Bakhmetyev Boris Alexandrovich . hrono.ru. Date of treatment January 31, 2019.
- ↑ Not to be confused with the Herzen “Bakhmetev Fund” - funds transferred in 1858 to Herzen by the young landowner P. A. Bakhmetyev for the needs of the Russian revolution and at the disposal of A. I. Herzen , and then N. P. Ogaryov .
- ↑ 1 2 Ivanyan E.A. Encyclopedia of Russian-American Relations. XVIII-XX centuries. - Moscow: International Relations, 2001. - S. 71. - 696 p. - ISBN 5-7133-1045-0 .
- ↑ Abrikosov D. I. The fate of a Russian diplomat. M .: Russian Way, 2008. p. 313.
- ↑ Since the US administration did not recognize Soviet power until 1933.
- ↑ Supporting the activities of the Russian government of Kolchak .
- ↑ B. A. Bakhmetev - diplomat, politician, thinker. Oleg Vitalievich Budnitsky - PEOPLE AND TIMES. Strokes to the portrait - AMERICA AND RUSSIA - USA - Russian Abroad - Russia in colors . ricolor.org. Date of treatment January 31, 2019.
- ↑ Bakhmetev, Boris Aleksandrovich. The mechanics of turbulent flow; lectures delivered under the William Pierson Field Foundation at Princeton University, February 1935 . - University Microfilms, Inc, 1962].
- ↑ Yuri Zeldich. Vanity // Word \ Word. - 2010.
- ↑ Old Cottages: A Guide.
- ↑ Yuri Zeldich. Vanity // Word \ Word. - 2010.
Links
- Bakhmetiev Boris Alexandrovich on the Chronos
- Bakhmetev Boris Alexandrovich
- Russian abroad. The Golden Book of Emigration. The first third of the XX century. Encyclopedic Biographical Dictionary. - M.: Russian Political Encyclopedia, 1997. - S. 70-71.
- Bakhmetev's biography on the page of the "Bahmetev Foundation" on the website of Columbia University
- Boris Alexandrovich Bakhmetev
- APPOINTMENT OF BORIS BAKHMETEV. Russian Americans [ [1] ]
- B. A. Bakhmetev - diplomat, politician, thinker .