Prof. I. I. Kosonogov

(Obituary)

On March 22, 1922, Iosif Iosifovich Kosonogov, professor of physics at Kiev University, died in Kiev. Death unexpectedly cut short his exceptionally intense activity amid the difficult moral and material conditions of contemporary Russian life. Over a long period of more than thirty years of scientific work within the walls of Kiev University, I. I. gained wide renown as a brilliant lecturer and won the deep affection of his numerous students as a teacher possessing a rare combination of high qualities of mind and heart.

I. I. Kosonogov, by origin a Don Cossack, was born in the Don Cossack Host Region (in the stanitsa of Kamenskaya) in 1866. Having received his elementary education at the local progymnasium and at the Nezhin gymnasium, from 1884 to 1889 he attended lectures at the physico-mathematical faculty of Kiev University, where all his subsequent activity proceeded, first as an assistant and privat-docent, and then, beginning in 1903, as professor of physics and head of the university’s physical laboratory. The greater part of I. I.’s scientific works are devoted to the investigation of electrical phenomena. It is worth noting his excellent monograph, still the only one of its kind in Russian physical literature, On Dielectrics. Kiev, 1901. (A Review of Experimental Investigations of Dielectrics in Connection with the Theory of Electrical Oscillations.) In this extensive book (315 pages), in addition to a historical-critical study of methods for determining dielectric coefficients and of the results obtained, there is a very detailed exposition of the theory of electrical oscillations, the propagation of electromagnetic waves, and a number of investigations on electrical dispersion, especially of waves of small length—a question that deeply interested I. I. also during his later work. I. I. was the first to use the ultramicroscope for studying the phenomena of electrolysis. His works devoted to this question are: “The Investigation of Electrolysis by Means of the Ultramicroscope” (1909), “On the Influence of a Magnetic Field on Current Lines in Electrolytes” (1911), and others. In the field of the study of light phenomena, I. I. investigated the selective absorption and reflection of light. The results of these investigations were set forth in his doctoral dissertation: “Optical Resonance as the Cause of Selective Reflection and Absorption of Light” (1903). The last series of I. I.’s scientific works was devoted to the phenomena of the passage of a gas flow through porous bodies. The results obtained were set forth in the works: “On the Gas-Motive Force Arising upon Contact of Heterogeneous Porous Bodies” (1922), “Gas-Electric Analogies,” “On the Contact Difference of Pressures within Porous Bodies,” and others.

I. I. took an active part in organizing the Second Congress of the Russian Association of Physicists, held in Kiev in September 1921, of which he was elected chairman. At the beginning of 1922, I. I. was elected an academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

Under I. I.’s guidance in the physical laboratory of Kiev University, a number of young physicists received their training and began their scientific work; among them may be counted Prof. Ch. T. Białobrzeski, Prof. S. I. Koniadyka,

A. N. Zarubin (died in 1919), N. P. Pansky (died in 1918), B. A. Grishchenko (died in 1922), and a whole series of others who taught physics in higher schools in Russia and beyond.

I. I. compiled and published a number of manuals and teaching aids in physics: Atmospheric Electricity and Terrestrial Magnetism, Foundations of Physics, A Concentric Textbook of Physics, First Conversations on Physics, Elementary Physics, and others.

I. I. took an active part in the organization and opening of the Higher Women’s Courses in Kiev in 1906, where he was elected the first dean of the physico-mathematical department. He also organized the physics laboratory of the Courses. I. I. took an active part in the Kiev Physico-Mathematical Society, where for a long time he was deputy chairman, as well as in the Kiev Physico-Chemical Society, the Physico-Medical Society, and other scientific societies and institutions of the city of Kiev. In 1921 I. I. was elected the first chairman of the Kiev branch of the Russian Society of Radio Engineers.

For all to whom knowledge and science are dear, the untimely death of Iosif Iosifovich represents a grievous and irreplaceable loss.

P. Lashin.

Kiev, May 18, 1922.
University.