Semyon Nikolaevich Korsakov

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Semyon Nikolaevich Korsakov

Semjon Nikolajewitsch Korsakow ( Russian Семён Николаевич Корсаков ; born January 14, 1787 in Cherson , Ukraine ; † December 1, 1853 in Tarusovo ( Taldom district ) in Moscow Oblast ) was a Russian government official, inventor and homeopath .

Live and act

Korsakov was born in 1787 in Kherson, then part of the Russian Empire . The family originally came from Lithuania , from where they emigrated in the 14th century.

Korsakov was married to Sofia Mordvinova. The couple had four daughters and six sons. One of these, Mikhail Semjonowitsch Korsakow ( Russian Михаил Семёнович Корсаков ) (1826–1871), became known as the governor general of Eastern Siberia and as the namesake of the city of Korsakov in Sakhalin Oblast and various Russian geological features .

From 1812 to 1814 Semyon Korsakov took part in the Russian Army in the Sixth Coalition War. He later worked as an official in the Statistics Department of the Russian Police Ministry in St. Petersburg . He was awarded the Russian Order of St. Anne and the Order of St. Vladimir .

Korsakov died in 1853 at the age of 66 in the village of Tarussowo in what was then the governorate and what is now Moscow Oblast .

homeopathy

Korsakov was not a trained doctor . However, he became interested in medicine, possibly due to the difficulty of getting medical help in the rural area where he lived . According to his records, he treated several thousand patients. He initially used conventional healing methods, but in 1829, at the urging of his relatives, switched to homeopathy .

Korsakow is considered to be the founder of the Korsakow method of potentiating , which differed from Hahnemann's method. With the K-exponentiation , the exponentiation is simplified in just one glass. The method was not included in the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia (HAB). Nevertheless, some companies use this method to produce high potencies due to time and cost reasons. Potencies that were prepared by this method are prefixed with K in. Korsakow also used higher potencies than were common at the time.

Inventions

The ideoscope (based on a drawing by Korsakov)

Semyon Korsakov was involved as an inventor in early forms of information technology. During his work for the statistics department of the police ministry, Korsakov was fascinated by the possibility of using devices to “increase natural intelligence”. For this purpose he developed various devices, which he called “machines for comparing ideas”. These included the “linear homeoscope with moving parts”, the “linear homeoscope without moving parts”, the “flat homeoscope”, the “ideoscope” and the “simple comparator”. The primary purpose of the devices was to facilitate the search for information that was stored in the form of punch cards or similar media, such as wooden boards with perforations. Korsakov registered his new method in September 1832, but was less interested in patent registration and offered it for free use.

The linear homeoscope without moving parts (based on a drawing by Korsakov)

Punch cards were introduced in 1805, but at that time they were only used in the textile industry to control weaving machines . Korsakov was probably the first to use the cards to store information.

Korsakov presented his ideas to the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg . However, their experts rejected his application because they did not recognize the potential of mechanized searches in large databases. His devices were largely forgotten until after the Second World War . It was not until 1961 that various Academy documents on Korsakov's inventions were published and a book by Korsakov was discovered.

Representation of the function of the linear homeoscope without moving parts
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literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Frass : Homeopathy in intensive and emergency medicine . Elsevier, Urban & Fischer Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3-437-57260-1 ( p. 79 ff. In the Google book search).
  2. ↑ Korsakov's "Intellectual Machines" , Cybernetics' department of NRNU MEPHI
personal data
SURNAME Korsakov, Semyon Nikolaevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Korsakoff, Semyon Nikolaevich; Корсаков, Семён Николаевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian government official, inventor and homeopath
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1787
PLACE OF BIRTH Kherson , Ukraine
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1853
Place of death Tarussowo, Rajon Taldom , Moscow Oblast