Stepan Gavrilovich Malygin

Stepan Gawrilowitsch (Grigorjewitsch) Malygin ( Russian Степан Гаврилович (Григорьевич) Малыгин ; * in the 17th century; † 1764 in Kazan , Russian Empire ) was a Russian polar explorer and author of the first Russian-language navigation manual . During the Second Kamchatka Expedition (also known as the Great Nordic Expedition ) he headed the Western Department and mapped the Russian coast between the island of Dolgi and the mouth of the Ob .

Life

Stepan Malygin's date of birth is unknown. From 1711 he attended the Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation (Russian Школа математических и навигацких наук) and in 1712 was in Henry Fargwarson's arithmetic class (1674-1739). In 1717 he completed his studies and became a guard in the Baltic fleet . In the following years he sailed on various ships in the Baltic Sea and the Barents Sea and was promoted to lieutenant in 1728. In 1731 he submitted the first navigation manual in Russian to the Russian Academy of Sciences . The Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler , member of the academy, examined the work and stated that all problems were dealt with correctly and that the booklet could serve as a textbook. It could then appear in 1733. In 1734 Malygin became a mathematics teacher for a navigation training company.

Map of the surveyed area: from the mouth of the Pechora in the west through the Jugor Strait around the Yamal Peninsula in the Obbusen.

In 1733 the Second Kamchatka expedition began under the direction of Vitus Bering . A central task of the company was the mapping of the entire Russian north coast from Arkhangelsk to the mouth of the Anadyr . In 1736 Malygin was appointed to take over the management of the western department. His predecessors, Stepan Muraviev and Mikhail Pavlov, had already done some of the work, but were so divided that it was uncertain whether they would be able to continue the work effectively. There were also a number of complaints from citizens of the city of Pustosersk , the then administrative center of the Pechora region , which had to be investigated. On May 25, 1736, Malygin arrived in Pustosersk and took over command. In June, Lieutenant Aleksei Skuratov left Arkhangelsk with two new ships and measured a few more sections of the coast before he met Malygin on the island of Dolgi in August. They took over the new ships and were faced with the task of accomplishing what had seldom succeeded before - finding a way around the Yamal peninsula in the obbuses . In difficult ice conditions, the ships drove through the Jugor Strait into the Kara Sea and Malygin decided not to return to the Pechora for wintering, but to stay on the river in order to be able to map the coast of the nearby Yamal Peninsula from autumn to spring on an overland expedition . In July 1737 the ships sailed the entire west coast of Yamal, and in October they reached Beryosovo on the Ob , from where Malygin returned by land to Saint Petersburg, where his work was recognized by the Admiralty.

In 1738 he continued teaching, and from 1741 to 1748 he was the commander of the training company. During the Russo-Swedish War (1741-1743) Malygin commanded a 54-gun ship. In 1751 he became the commandant of the Archangel Rafail . When his health deteriorated in the early 1750s, he asked for a post on land and became port commander of Riga . He remained in this post during the Seven Years' War and then became head of the Admiralty's office in Kazan, where he died in 1764.

The strait between the northern tip of the Jamal peninsula and the island of Bely is named after Malygin , as are several ships, e.g. B. the icebreaker , which met in 1931 at Hooker Island with the airship LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin , and a research ship of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also the likely namesake for the Malygin Nunatakker in Antarctica.

plant

Сокращённая навигация по карте де-Редукцион (German: Brief Navigation after the Carte de Reduction ), Saint Petersburg, 1733.

literature

Malygin (Stepan Grigoryevich) . In: Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона - Enziklopeditscheski slowar Brokgausa i Jefrona . tape 18 a [36]: Малолетство – Мейшагола. Brockhaus-Efron, Saint Petersburg 1896, p. 492 (Russian, full text [ Wikisource ] PDF ).
William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia . tape 2 . ABC-CLIO, 2003, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , pp. 399 (English, limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

Individual evidence

personal data
SURNAME	Malygin, Stepan Gavrilovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Malygin, Stepan Grigoryevich; Малыгин, Степан Гаврилович; Малыгин, Степан Григорьевич (Russian name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian polar explorer and naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH	17th century
DATE OF DEATH	1764
Place of death	Kazan , Russian Empire

[1] Malygin, Stepan Grigorjewitsch in the Encyclopaedic Dictionary by Brockhaus and Efron, 1890–1907.

[2] Judith Kh Kopelević. Leonhard Euler and the St. Petersburg Academy . In: EA Fellmann (Ed.): Leonhard Euler 1707–1783. Contributions to life and work . Springer, 2013, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , pp. 377 (English, limited preview in Google Book search).

[Mills-3] Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia. 2003, p. 399.

[GSE-4] Article Малыгин, Степан Гаврилович in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian) .