Pyotr Ivanovich Strachow

Peter Ivanovich Strakhov ( Russian Пётр Иванович Страхов ; born June 22, ^jul. / 3. July  1757 ^greg. In Moscow ; † February 12 ^jul. / 24. February  1813 ^greg. In Nizhny Novgorod ) was a Russian physicist , university professor and rector the Moscow University (MGU).

Life

Strachov's ancestors were nobles from Shuja . The grandfather became a village priest. The father was a village sexton and took a job in Moscow. Strachow was the youngest child and showed his special skills at an early age. As an eight-year-old he read the church registers, he helped his father copy old chronicles and was interested in Russian history . In August 1768 he was accepted into the grammar school at the MGU. From August 1771 to September 1772 classes were interrupted due to the plague .

After graduating from school in 1774 Strachow was enrolled as a student at the MGU Faculty of Philosophy by order of the director of the MGU Michail Wassiljewitsch Priklonski . He heard the lectures on applied mathematics and experimental physics from Johann Joachim Rost , who employed him as a tutor for his children.

After graduating in 1778 Strachow was secretary to the curator of the MGU Mikhail Matwejewitsch Cheraskow . Strakhov learned Nikolay Novikov and the university closer Jermil Ivanovich Kostrow know whose calls Strakhov literary promoted skills. In 1780 Strachow headed the MGU Freemason Lodge Hermes . On behalf of Nowikow, Strachow translated the book Des Erreurs et de la Vérité Ou Les Hommes rappelés au Principe Universel de la Science by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin in 1785 . In the same year, Strachow and Cheraskov's nephew were sent to Western Europe by the Brotherly Scholarly Society to get to know the educational system of universities, high schools and other study facilities. After his stays in Bohemia , Moravia , Switzerland , Austria , France and Germany , he found that the universities there were not moral models, but that they were due to the great variety of chairs and the extensive libraries , museums and teaching material collections of the MGU be superior.

After returning, Strachow was appointed associate professor . From September 1786 he was first chief overseer of the aristocratic pension at the MGU and then inspector of the two departments of the grammar school at the MGU. In 1791 after Rost's death, his chair was divided. Michail Iwanowitsch Pankewitsch received the new chair for mathematics , while Strachow was given the new chair for experimental physics as a full professor. Since he lacked the formal certificate in physics , he had to defend a special dissertation on the movement of bodies in general and celestial bodies in particular. Strachow's experimental lectures were very popular, especially since they were given in Russian for the first time at MGU . The university director Pawel Ivanovich Fonwisin had a special lecture hall set up for Strachov's lectures and provided a room for a physical cabinet. Strachow was Mathurin-Jacques Brisson's textbook Dictionnaire raisonné de physique in Russian (1800-1803) and then wrote his own textbook on physics (1803-1808), which appeared in 1810. He also gave public lectures with effective experimental demonstrations, which Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamsin attended regularly.

For the first time in Russia , Strachow experimentally demonstrated the electrical conductivity of water and wet earth , for which purpose he also carried out experiments outside the laboratory in the countryside. The Journal of the Moscow Society of Naturalists reported on the demonstration attempt to conduct electricity in Moscow across the Moskva River in 1802 . He also studied the freezing and evaporation of mercury . Atmospheric physics was a focus of work . In 1808 he organized the systematic weather observation , which was reported in the Moskovsky Vedomosti .

In September 1803 Strachow was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences . In the same year he became dean of the philosophical faculty of the MGU. In 1805 he was elected an honorary member of the Moscow Society of Naturalists, and received the Order of Saint Anne II Class with Diamonds .

In May 1805, the MGU University Council elected Strachow Rector to succeed Khariton Andreevich Chebotaryov . During Strachow's tenure, Matwei Fyodorowitsch Kasakow was hired as a university architect , who then built the main building of the university. The number of lecture halls was increased, the library was expanded, and the leasing of the university printing plant was ended. Strachow tried to get the high school at the MGU, which was threatened with closure because of a new government regulation, which was maintained with funds from the university printing plant and a large sum of money from Pavel Grigoryevich Demidov .

In 1807 Strachow gave up the office of rector for health reasons, but was twice elected dean of the physical-mathematical department (1809-1811, 1812-1813). Strachow's successor in the rector's office was Theodor Grigoryevich Bause . 1808–1812 Strachow carried out daily weather observations on behalf of the curator of the science district Count Alexei Kirillowitsch Rasumowski . In 1809, together with Ferdinand Friedrich von Reuss , he discovered the phenomenon of electrophoresis .

Strachow was an honorary member of the Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy and many foreign learned societies , the University of Kharkov , the Society for History and Russian Antiquities , the Society of Friends of Russian Literature , the Dukes Latin Society of Jena and the Society of Advocates of Medical and Physical Sciences . He loved the theater and translated Jean-Jacques Barthélemy's Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce (1803-1809).

During the Franco-Russian War of 1812 , Strachow directed the evacuation of the university property . He got first to Vladimir and then to Nizhny Novgorod , where he died and was buried.

Strachow's nephew was the medic Pyotr Illarionowitsch Strachow , who became an honorary member of the MGU.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Андреев А. Ю., Цыганков Д. А .: Императорский Московский университет: 1755–1917: энциклопедический словарь . Российская политическая энциклопедия (РОССПЭН), Moscow 2010, ISBN 978-5-8243-1429-8 , p. 693-694 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Страхов, Петр Иванович . In: Русский биографический словарь А. А. Половцова . tape 12 , 1909, pp. 456–458 ( Wikisource [accessed November 3, 2018]).
3. ↑ Страхов (Петр Иванович, 1757–1813) . In: Brockhaus-Efron . XXXIa, 1901, pp. 787 ( Wikisource [accessed November 3, 2018]).
4. ↑ Мир Науки и Культуры: Петр Иванович Страхов , accessed November 3, 2018.
5. ↑ MGU: Страхов Пётр Иванович , accessed on November 3, 2018.
6. ↑ Серков А.И .: Русское масонство. 1731-2000 гг. Энциклопедический словарь . Российская политическая энциклопедия, Moscow 2001, ISBN 5-8243-0240-5 .