Kotelnikov, Semyon Kirillovich

Semyon Kirillovich Kotelnikov ( 1723 , St. Petersburg - April 1 [13] 1806 , ibid. ) - Russian mathematician, ordinary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, member of the Russian Academy ( 1783 ).

Semyon Kirillovich Kotelnikov
Date of Birth
Place of Birth
Date of death
A place of death
A country
Scientific field	mathematician
Place of work
Alma mater
Academic rank	Academician of SPbAN
supervisor

The son of an ordinary Preobrazhensky regiment, an eleven-year-old boy, entered the school of Feofan Prokopovich ; from 1738 he studied at the Alexander Nevsky Seminary , from where on July 31, 1741 he was transferred to the Academic Gymnasium , and on September 3, 1742 he entered the Academic University . After writing the thesis, “De rectificatione et quadratura conchoidis per tangentem” was awarded the title of adjunct and sent abroad. In 1752-1756 he studied in Berlin with Leonard Euler . Upon his return to Russia, on December 14, 1756, Kotelnikov was elected an extraordinary professor at the Department of Higher Mathematics at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences; September 29, 1760 approved in the rank of full professor.

April 6, 1761 Kotelnikov was appointed inspector of the Academic Gymnasium. After some time, he was asked about the transformation of the Academic Gymnasium and the Academic University, but his initiative led to his dismissal from the post of inspector of the gymnasium on January 2, 1766.

S.K. Kotelnikov was in charge of the geographical department, library, and Kunstkamera; taught in the naval gentry cadet corps mathematical and navigational sciences.

He wrote several memoirs in Latin and Russian: “Phaenomenorum iridis seu arcus coelestis disquisitio”, “De aequilibrio virium corporibus applicatarum commentatio”, “De commoda acus declinatoriae suspensione dissertatiuncula”; besides this: “On the Usefulness of Exercise in Pure Mathematical Reasoning” (1761) - a book containing the doctrine of the balance and movement of bodies; “Arithmetic or the first foundations of the mathematical sciences” (1763), “Young Geodet or the first foundations of geodesy” (1766), etc. In addition, Kotelnikov worked on the publication of the Sunday and Sofia chronicles in Novgorod, gave public lectures on mathematical issues and participated in the commission on raising public education.