Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky

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Igor I. Sikorsky

Igor Sikorsky (including Sikorsky , Russian Игорь Иванович Сикорский , Ukrainian Ігор Іванович Сікорський Ihor Iwanowytsch Sikorskyj , scientific. Transliteration Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky (Russian) and Igor Ivanovyč Sikors'kyj (Ukrainian); * 25. May 1889 in Kiev , Russian Empire ; † October 26, 1972 in Easton , Connecticut , United States ) was a Russian / Ukrainian and US- American aviation pioneer . He created the first four-engine aircraft and with them the foundations for modern passenger aviation . Much better known, however, is his work as a designer and builder of helicopters , not least through the helicopter manufacturer that still exists today under his name.

Life

Igor Sikorski was born in Kiev as the youngest son of Ivan Sikorskyj , a professor of medicine at the University of Kiev , who was part of a Ukrainian priestly family. Igor Sikorski's mother was named Marija Stefanovna Sikorskaja (nee Temryuk-Cherkassova) and was a non-practicing doctor.

He studied at the Military Naval Institute in Saint Petersburg . Among his work as chief engineer of the aviation department of Russo-Balt (Russian-Baltic wagon factory, largest industrial conglomerate of the Russian Empire with railway, automobile and aircraft production in Riga, Moscow and Saint-Petersburg) was the first four-engine aircraft Russky Vityaz (Russian warrior) which he himself flew on May 13, 1913. A further development of this was the Ilja Muromez . Sikorski's planes were used as bombers by the Russian army during World War I.

Igor Sikorski was married to Olga Fyodorovna Simkovich in Russia and had a daughter, Tatiana, who was born in Kiev in 1918 and lived until September 22, 2008. The marriage ended in divorce. Igor Sikorski emigrated to the USA at the age of 30 after the Russian Revolution of 1917 during the Russian Civil War in 1919 . The daughter Tatiana stayed with her mother in Russia.

His later second wife Elisabet Aleksejewna Semjonowa (* 1903 in Slavna, Russia, † 1995) lost her parents in the Russian Revolution and worked in a hospital of the Red Cross for refugees in Siberia. When the Red Cross was driven out of Russia, Elisabet Semjonowa was smuggled to Japan, where she worked as a nanny for a Japanese family for three years and traveled to the United States in 1920 with money saved. In the early 1920s, Igor Sikorski and Elizabeth Semjonowa met at the Russian Collegiate Institute in New York City, where both taught. They married in New York in 1924. In 1923 Igor Sikorsky's sisters emigrated to the USA and brought his daughter Tatiana with them.

Igor and Elisabet Sikorski had four sons: Sergei, Nikolai, Igor Jr. and George. Sergei, who was first born in 1925, was given his first name after the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff . In 1928 Sikorski received US citizenship.

Sikorski founded the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Company in 1923 with the support of many emigrated Russians, including the Rachmaninovs , which was later taken over by United Aircraft . Both companies are now part of United Technologies Corporation . The company manufactured flying boats such as the Sikorsky S-42 , which Pan Am used for transatlantic flights and became known as the Pan Am Clipper , but mostly helicopters .

Sikorski had already experimented with helicopters in Russia. On May 13, 1940 he took off for the first free flight with the Sikorsky VS-300 , which had a main rotor and a tail rotor for torque compensation. This shape, also known as the tail rotor configuration , is now considered the standard design because it is the most commonly used.

In 1955 Sikorski was awarded the James Watt Medal . The Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation is one of the leading helicopter manufacturers to this day.

Honors

Igor Sikorsky Monument in Kiev

In 1968 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering . The American Helicopter Society's 1980 award for Muscle Power Helicopter Flight - donated by Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation and increased to US $ 250,000 in 2010 - is named after Sikorsky. It was not until June 13, 2013 that a Canadian team won the award with the AeroVelo Atlas .

The Sikorski Glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula has borne his name since September 23, 1960 .

On May 23, 2000 the asteroid was named after Igor Sikorski: (10090) Sikorsky .

On March 25, 2010 Autodesk released a new version of Autodesk Inventor , in which Sikorski's name was the inspiration for the company's internal name in his honor.

In the spring of 2018, the Kyiv Shulyany Airport was renamed Igor Sikorsky Airport in his honor by a decision of the Kyiv City Council.

literature

Web links

Commons : Igor Iwanowitsch Sikorski  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Igor Sikorsky Dies - Today in History
  2. ↑ Biography of Ivan Sikorskyj on uahistory.com ; accessed on June 1, 2017 (Ukrainian)
  3. ^ Members Directory: Igor Sikorsky. National Academy of Engineering, accessed June 9, 2017 .
  4. ^ The AHS Sikorsky Prize , Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center, University of Maryland, accessed March 20, 2013
  5. ↑ Message on the homepage of AeroVelo ( Memento of the original from August 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 12, 2013  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.aerovelo.com
  6. ↑ Kyiv Shulyany Airport now bears the name of Igor Sikorski , report by the Ukrainian press agency Ukrinform dated March 22, 2018, accessed on September 21, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Sikorsky, Igor Ivanovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Сікорский, Игорь Иванович
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian and American aviation pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiev
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1972
Place of death Easton , Connecticut