IVAN IVANOVICH TIKHANOVSKY

1893–1930

In Simferopol, on October 11, 1930, Ivan Ivanovich Tikhanovsky, professor of physics at the Crimean Pedagogical Institute, died. Ivan Ivanovich’s name as a scientist was widely known. The most beloved field of his work was atmospheric optics. In questions of the scattering of light in the earth’s atmosphere and the polarization of the celestial vault, he was undoubtedly the foremost specialist not only in the USSR, but also abroad.

I. I. graduated in 1915 from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Kazan University, receiving a gold medal and an offer to remain at the Department of Geophysics for scientific work. He was, however, forced to decline this offer and move to Tashkent, where he worked as a teacher of physics and mathematics in the cadet corps. After the revolution he was elected a lecturer in physics at Turkestan University, and in 1924—professor of physics at the Crimean University. Here, at the Crimean University, and after its closure in the Crimean Pedagogical Institute formed in its place, the rich abilities and exceptional energy that I. I. possessed unfolded most fully. It should be noted that at the time of his election to the chair of physics I. I. had a comparatively small number of scientific works, and the election was carried out chiefly thanks to the very favorable opinions of such scholars as O. D. Khvolson, T. A. Tikhanov, A. V. Voznesensky, and others, who knew Ivan Ivanovich personally and saw that, under favorable conditions, he could give much to science. I. I. fully justified this confidence. In the very next years there appeared a whole series of his works devoted to the method of capillary measurements and to the polarization of the celestial vault. These latter works, as it were, receive a coherent completion in the theory he created of the scattering of light in the earth’s atmosphere, which represents the most perfect of all the numerous solutions to this complex question proposed up to now. I. I.’s scientific merits were appreciated both in our country and abroad. For his work on atmospheric optics, the People’s Commissariat of Education awarded him a prize. He was elect—

...was elected a member of our and of international actinometric commissions. Finally, it is noteworthy that when, in Germany, the publication of a large collective work on geophysics was undertaken (under the editorship of Prof. Gutenberg), of all Russian scholars only I. I. Tikhanovsky was invited to participate in it.

As a teacher, I. I. undoubtedly possessed exceptional qualities. The courses he taught were always distinguished by astonishing clarity and simplicity of exposition. At the Pedagogical Institute he was among the first professors to adopt the path of new methods of teaching. To all this it must be added that I. I. was an excellent organizer and loved organizational work. From the small and, moreover, somewhat chaotic physics laboratory of the Crimean University, he managed in a short time to create a Physical Institute that even some of our central higher educational institutions might envy. Another beloved creation of I. I. was the Atmospheric-Optical Station that he organized in Simferopol. Despite the great importance that atmospheric-optical observations have for the most diverse branches of agriculture and industry, stations of this kind are counted only in units. In the USSR the Simferopol station remains to this day the only one. Like every innovator, I. I. from the very first steps had to encounter misunderstanding and inertia in all the institutions to which he appealed for assistance for his cause. The station was created and developed solely thanks to the personal labor and partly the personal funds of I. I. In recognition of his enormous services in organizing the Physical Institute and the Optical Station, the commission for perpetuating the memory of I. I. Tikhanovsky resolved to assign his name to both of these institutions.

At the same time as I. I. grew as a scholar and his pedagogical and organizational activity developed, his political growth also proceeded. He took his stand on the platform of Soviet power as early as 1918, but at first he still continued to remain a typical scholar of the old school, seeing the whole purpose of his life in service to science, which for him was an end in itself. In the last years of I. I.’s life there occurred a profound ideological turning point. He came more and more to the idea that his work as a teacher and scholar must be not only sufficiently linked with the tasks of the proletarian state, but that these tasks must subordinate to themselves and be the sole guiding factor for all his activity. Having arrived at this conclusion, I. I., with his characteristic energy, first of all set about completing his Marxist education and, one of the first among the professorial staff, began systematically to present in his lectures dialectical views of nature. In the last year of his life, I. I. worked much himself on the question of illuminating the fundamental principles of physics from the standpoint of dialectical materialism. The results of this work I. I. intended to present at the First All-Union Congress of Physicists, which took place in August...

1. The illness that brought him to the grave, however, did not allow him to carry out these plans.

Subordinating his personal scientific interests to the needs of the national economy, I. I. began to take up questions from which he had previously been very far removed. These include measurements of the radioactivity of the waters of Crimean springs, investigations of the physical properties of Crimean building stones, and so on. After the Crimean earthquake he began to work seriously in the field of seismology. The only determination of the depth of the earthquake foci in Crimea was made by him.

But an especially vivid expression of the change that had occurred in I. I.’s outlook was his public work, to which he devoted himself with all his characteristic energy. In recent times he was also chairman of the local committee of the Pedagogical Institute, and editor of the wall newspaper, and the first promoter of shock-work and socialist competition among scientific workers, etc. The public review of I. I.’s work turned into a genuine attestation. In their speeches the representatives of the proletarian student body evaluated I. I. as a “red professor,” “one of their own,” and so forth. After the review it became completely clear to I. I. that he could no longer remain outside the VKP(b). In the spring of the current year he joined the ranks of the party.

Strenuous work, together with complete disregard for his health, had already then undermined I. I.’s strength to a considerable degree; but no one could yet have imagined that this young scientist and public figure, only just reaching the full flowering of his fruitful activity, had so little time left to live. Ivan Ivanovich took to his bed at the beginning of August. In the opinion of all the doctors who treated him, the illness was the result of enormous overwork, which had affected the entire organism. Death came after two difficult, agonizing months. But until the very last days, despite the doctors’ prohibition, I. I. not only continued to take an interest in affairs, but in fact directed the entire life of the Physical Institute. Thus there perished at his post an outstanding scholar, pedagogue, and public figure, who had given much in his short life to Soviet science and the Soviet school, and who undoubtedly still harbored within himself possibilities many times greater.

Principal printed works of I. I. Tikhanovsky

1. Polarization of the sky. Proceedings of the Turkestan Department of the Russian Geographical Society, XIV, issue 1, 1918.

2. Polarization of the sky as a local sign of weather. Mirovedenie, No. 2 (41), 1921.

3. Polarization of skylight in Tashkent in 1916—1921. Mirovedenie, No. 1 (42), 1922.

4. Haidinger’s brushes and their application to observations of the polarization of skylight. Mirovedenie, 2 (43), 1922.

5. Polarization of skylight in Tashkent in 1922. Mirovedenie, No. 1 (44), 1923.

1. The Color of the Polarization Components of Skylight. Meteorologische Zeitschrift, vol. 41, 1924.

2. Theory of the Determination of the Capillary Constants of Liquids by the Ring-Tear-Off Method. Physikalische Zeitschrift, vol. 25, 1924.

3. The Polychroism of Sky Polarization. Phys. Zs., vol. 25, 1924.

4. Spectral polarization of skylight in Tashkent. Meteorological Bulletin, 1924.

5. Polarization of Skylight and Solar Altitude. Met. Zs., vol. 41, 1924.

6. Contributions to the Theory of the Martens Polarimeter. Phys. Zs., 1924.

7. Phenomena of light polarization in the natural turbid medium of the atmosphere. Journal of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, physical section, vol. 56, 1924.

8. Method for measuring the transparency coefficient of the lower layers of the atmosphere. Journal of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, physical section, vol. 56, 1924.

9. On the Theory of the Tear-Off Method. Phys. Zs., vol. 26, 1925.

10. On the Question of the Influence of Dust and Moisture on Sky Polarization. Met. Zs., vol. 43, 1926.

11. Results of Measurements of Sky Polarization in Various Spectral Regions. Met. Zs., vol. 43, 1926.

12. The Optics of Crimea. Proceedings of the Crimean Scientific-Research Institute, vol. I, 1926.

13. Does Secondary Diffusion in the Atmosphere Play a Significant Role in Sky Polarization? Met. Zs., vol. 43, 1916.

14. Turbidity of the Earth’s atmosphere in general and in Feodosia in particular. Bulletin of Weather and Sea Conditions, no. 18, Feodosia, 1926.

15. Scattering of light in the atmosphere. U. F. N., no. 4, 1926.

16. Studies of the polarization of skylight. Journal of Geophysics and Meteorology, no. 2, 1927.

17. The Determination of the Optical Anisotropy Coefficient of Air Molecules by Measurements of Sky Polarization. Phys. Zs., no. 7, 1927.

18. Theory of Light Scattering in the Earth’s Atmosphere. Phys. Zs., no. 20, 1927.

19. On the Theory of Light Scattering in the Earth’s Atmosphere, no. 13, 1928.

20. Theory of the polarization and brightness of skylight for an absolutely pure atmosphere. Proceedings of the Crimean Pedagogical Institute, vol. II, 1928.

21. On the Methodology of Measurements with the Aitken Nucleus Counter. Met. Zs., no. 3, 1928.

22. Optical Station in Simferopol. Zeitschrift für Geophysik, 1928; Met. Zs., 45, 1928.

23. On the Theory of the Measurement of Sky Polarization. Met. Zs., 1929.

24. The Simferopol Seismic Station of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR at the Crimean Scientific-Research Institute. Proceedings of the Crimean Scientific-Research Institute, vol. II, 1928.

25. The depth of occurrence of the focus of Crimean earthquakes. Proceedings of the Crimean Scientific-Research Institute, vol. III, 1930.

26. On the methodology for studying the visibility of railway signals under various states of atmospheric turbidity. Proceedings of the Crimean Scientific-Research Institute, vol. III, 1930.

27. Water Balance of the Stratosphere, chapter in Handbuch der Geophysik, vol. 8/9, edited by Gutenberg (in press).