Person: Kolosov, Gury Vasilievich
Gury Vasilievich Kolosov was a Russian mathematician who worked on the theory of elasticity.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- In 1908 Kolosov began working on the theory of elasticity and his doctoral thesis (equivalent to the German habilitation standard) contains Kolosov's formulas expressing the components of the stress tensor and the displacement vector in terms of two analytic functions of one complex variable.
- Kolosov's thesis contained a formal solution of the plane problems of the theory of elasticity.
- Steklov had been appointed to examine the thesis and at first he was not convinced that Kolosov's derivation of his formulas was rigorous.
- The second interesting comment is that Kolosov was not the first to discover the formulas now named after him .
- The first discoverer was Sergei Chaplygin who had derived them ten years earlier, but he had not thought them sufficiently important to publish - Chaplygin of course was quite wrong in this assessment and this fact alone would justify them now being named after Kolosov.
- The irony of this story is that Chaplygin had worked in the same department as Kolosov.
- The formulas were first published by Kolosov in his 1909 paper An application of the theory of functions of a complex variable to a planar problem in the mathematical theory of elasticity (Russian).
- From 1893 Kolosov was employed both as the director of the mechanics laboratory at St Petersburg University, and as a teacher at the St Petersburg Institute of Communications Engineers.
- However, between 1893 and 1918 the city was known as Yurev or Yuryev and it was during this period that Kolosov worked there.
- In 1913 Kolosov returned to St Petersburg where he spent the rest of his career.
- Kolosov worked in the famous city through a very difficult period since the Russian Revolution essentially began in St Petersburg in 1917.
- However after the civil war ended the city began to prosper again and by the time of Kolosov's death its population was nearly three million.
- In addition to the important results we have mention above, we note that in 1907 Kolosov derived the solution for stresses around an elliptical hole.
- Engineers have to understand Kolosov results so that stresses can be kept to safe levels.
Born 25 August 1867, Ust, Novgorod guberniya, Russia. Died 7 November 1936, Leningrad, USSR (now St Petersburg, Russia).
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References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
