In Memory of E. V. Bogoslovsky

V. K. Arkadiev, Moscow

On January 5, 1939, after a brief illness, Professor of the University of Rostov-on-Don, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Evgeny Vasilievich Bogoslovsky, died unexpectedly.

E. V. Bogoslovsky was born on March 18, 1885, in Ryazan. In 1909 he graduated from Moscow University, where he was retained to prepare for the rank of professor. I became acquainted with him when, still a student, he appeared in the research laboratory of Prof. P. N. Lebedev; there E. V. developed a method for the stroboscopic observation of capillary waves propagating over the surface of a liquid. The method he worked out proved so practical that it is still used at Moscow University in lectures to demonstrate the basic phenomena of reflection, refraction, interference, and diffraction of waves.^1

In 1910 E. V. was invited to serve as an assistant in the department of physics at the University of Warsaw, which at that time was headed by A. R. Kolly. From this time onward E. V.’s scientific interests were determined by the subject matter of the University of Warsaw’s physics laboratory, which was wholly occupied with the study of questions of the dispersion of decimeter and meter waves in liquid dielectrics (in water, alcohol, benzene, and others).

After the evacuation of the University of Warsaw to Rostov-on-Don, Evgeny Vasilievich, together with Prof. Kolly, established in the new location a physics institute, now belonging to the Rostov Pedagogical Institute. In 1918, after Kolly’s death, E. V. independently headed the physics institute and drew around himself a group of young scientific researchers of the electromagnetic spectrum of liquids. Himself a pupil of the outstanding experimenter Prof. P. N. Lebedev, Evgeny Vasilievich, among his own students, always

supported the best traditions of the experimental school of Petr Nikolaevich. Approaching himself and his scientific collaborators with great exactingness, E. V. achieved the result that the investigations issuing from the physical laboratory of Rostov University, in their accuracy and reliability, earned high appraisal. References and indications to these works are found in journal articles and monographs of Soviet and foreign literature.

In the course of twenty years of his work in Rostov, E. V., together with his students, also carried out a number of investigations going beyond the limits of his principal subject matter. All the works of E. V. and of his school bear the features of a high scientific culture, of being well armed with scientific knowledge, of great circumspection and precision in the investigations carried out by E. V. himself and by his students.

E. V., in particular, devoted a number of works to checking the conclusions which A. R. Collie drew from his observations. Thus, Collie supposed that a chemical action of decimeter waves on mixtures of certain liquids, for example, toluene and benzene, was possible.

If this phenomenon existed, then one might speak of an effect similar to a photochemical one. The investigation carried out by Shulvas-Sorokina^12 under the direction of Evgenii Vasil'evich gave a definitely negative answer.

For an analogous reason, a study was undertaken with the aim of finding out whether abrupt changes in the physical properties of mixtures of water and ethyl alcohol occur with small changes of concentration. To this, too, a quite definite answer was obtained in the work of Alekseeva,^13 a collaborator of E. V., which rejected Collie’s supposition, based, evidently, on insufficiently accurate measurements of the refractive index of the named mixture.

A number of very precise investigations of the refractive index of water were carried out under the direction of E. V. by his students Alimova and Novosil'tsev.^14–16 These investigations shed a bright light on the behavior of water in waves from 110 to 360 cm. By the works of the school of E. V. Bogoslovskii it was established that, in the indicated interval, the refractive index of water is equal to 9 with an accuracy to thousandths.

A number of works was devoted to studying the apparatus itself and the method of observations according to Lecher’s system of parallel wires, on which measurements of the refractive index of liquids are made.^17 The theoretical and experimental investigation of the method of measurements under the direction of E. V. was carried out by V. N. Kessenikh,^18,19 now a professor of the Siberian University in Tomsk.

The investigations of the electrical spectrum of liquids carried out at E. V. Bogoslovskii’s institute belong among the most difficult; they stood in contradiction to the old conceptions of A. R. Collie, dating from the beginning of the nineteen-hundreds, but coincided with results obtained at the end of the twenties abroad. Evgenii Vasil'evich considered it possible, while not yet disputing it, to reject Collie’s conclusions, and allowed that the cause of the discrepancy might be that Collie worked with damped oscillations of large amplitude, whereas the precise measurements of recent years are often made with weak undamped oscillations.

In his article of 1935,^11 E. V. finds by calculation that in the first case the amplitude may be hundreds of times greater than in the second, and this, in E. V.’s opinion, according to the latest theoretical views on dielectrics, may alter the result of measurements by 10%. Therefore he concludes the article by indicating that subsequent measurements should be made both on apparatuses giving weak electrical oscillations and on those giving especially powerful oscillations.

Engaged in purely scientific questions, E. V. never forgot to apply his diverse scientific knowledge to the needs of practical life. According to the testimony of persons who worked with him, he, being a consultant of scientific-research institutions and industrial-

...of the enterprises of the Northern Caucasus, he always came to their aid with his experience and knowledge. Some of his consultations were of great importance: for example, from the standpoint of safety engineering he clarified the significance of the choice of color in painting current-carrying busbars.^20 E. V. Bogoslovsky discovered that imported German X-ray installations, advertised as unconditionally safe for the service personnel, were in fact dangerous to the life and health of X-ray technicians. In his joint work with E. V. he investigated this question in detail and indicated protective measures that actually safeguarded workers in X-ray rooms. He also made several inventions in the field of tramway transport.

Evgenii Vasil’evich for more than eighteen years directed the organizations and collectives that were the place of scientific communication and of the living contact among all the scientific workers—physicists—of the city of Rostov-on-Don.

According to the testimony of his listeners, E. V.’s lectures and public addresses—within the walls of the higher school, on the radio, in workers’ clubs, at scientific conferences, and before children’s audiences—were always a high example of pedagogical mastery and left for a long time a vivid impression. Always carefully prepared, remarkable for their illustrated original demonstrations, profound in content, they were distinguished by clarity and accessibility of exposition. Those who knew E. V.’s work well point out that for several years E. V. was the most active member of the All-Union sponsorship commission of the city of Rostov-on-Don and in the last year of his life its responsible secretary.

Evgenii Vasil’evich is no longer with us, but his cause has not died. In the Northern Caucasus region, where he lived and worked, he was a major cultural force. In his example everyone saw, including the rising generation, how one must live and work for one’s country, sparing neither one’s health nor one’s strength, sacrificing everything for one’s beloved cause, thinking every minute about one’s laboratory, one’s students, one’s co-workers, one’s collaborators. E. V. trained in the subtle art of experiment a whole series of young scientific investigators, who are continuing work in one of the most difficult fields of experimental physics and thereby maintain the traditions of high scientific culture that our fatherland inherited from Evgenii Vasil’evich.

The loss suffered by our Soviet country in the person of Evgenii Vasil’evich is very great. We have lost not only an outstanding scientific worker, but an exceptionally sensitive, modest, and honest man, who evoked in those around him a feeling of deep respect and sincere sympathy.

Literature

1. E. V. Bogoslovsky, “Capillary Waves and Huygens’ Principle,” Diary of the XII Congress of Naturalists and Physicians, protocols, 226, 1910.

1a. Experiments of E. V. Bogoslovsky, Fizicheskoe obozrenie, 11, 1910.

1. E. V. Bogoslovsky, “On Brownian Motion,” Proceedings of the Society of Physicists and Chemists, physics section, 42, issue 9, 1910.

2. E. V. Bogoslovsky, “On the Theory of a Galvanometer with a Moving Coil,” reported in 1919. Novocherkassk, 1924.

3. E. V. Bogoslovsky, “On the Theory of Sensations of Motion,” Journal of Applied Physics, 1, 223, 1924.

4. E. V. Bogoslovsky, “On the Question of the Sensation of Motion” (abstract), reported in 1921. Rostov-on-Don, 1924.

5. E. V. Bogoslovsky, “Can Light Pressure Play a Role in the Phenomenon of Phototaxis,” reported in 1924. Published by Don State University, 1925.

1. E. Bogoslovsky, Eigentümlichkeiten des Gleichstromkreises mit eingeschaltetem Unterbrecher, Fortschr. auf dem Gebiete der Röntgenstrahlen, 37, 1, 46, 1928.

2. E. V. Bogoslovsky, On the question of the danger of working with so-called protected X-ray installations, Vestn. rentgenol. i radiol., 9, 4, 1931.

3. E. Bogoslovsky, Bemerkung zur Arbeit der Herren O. Ruff, G. Niese und F. Thomas, Über die Abhängigkeit der Oberflächenspannung von der elektrischen Aufladung, Ann. d. Phys., 84, 323, 1927.

4. Prof. E. Bogoslovsky with student I. Bedzakow and student Dobrotin, Zur Frage über die Orientierung im Raum eines fallendes Tieres, Ber. d. Gesellsch. russ. Physiologen Nann. I. Setschenov, H. 3, 1929.

5. E. V. Bogoslovsky, On a comparison of the results of measurements of the dielectric constants of liquids, Uch. zapiski Rostovsk. gos. univ., issue VI, jubilee issue, 3, 1935.

6. R. D. Shulvas-Sorokina, Investigation of the dielectric constant of a mixture of toluene and benzene under the action of short electric waves, ZhRFKhO, phys. part, 50, 2, 80, 1928.

7. K. I. Alekseeva, Über die Oberflächenspannung eines Gemisches von Äthylalkohol und Wasser, Z. physik. Chem., 134, 467, 1928.

8. N. S. Novosiltsev, Investigation of the electric spectrum of water in the wavelength region from 3000 to 2200 mm at a power of undamped oscillations, ZhRFKhO, phys. part, 61, 6, 507, 1929; Ann. Phys., (5) 2, 5, 515, 1929.

9. M. Alimowa, Untersuchungen des elektrischen Spektrums des Wassers mit gedämpften Schwingungen in dem Wellenlängenbereich von 2200—2900 mm, Ann. Phys., (5) 9, 2, 176, 1931.

10. M. M. Alimowa und N. S. Nowosilzew, Der Brechungsindex des Wassers für Wellen von 3 bis 3,6 m. Länge, Ann. Phys., (5) 19, 1, 118, 1934.

11. R. D. Shulvas-Sorokina, Investigation of a generator of undamped oscillations in the wavelength range 46–40 cm, Izv. Sev.-Kavk. gos. univ., 2 (12), 1927.

12. W. Kessenich, Über den Einfluss des induktiv gekoppelten Indikators auf Stehende elektrische Drahtwellen, Ann. Phys., (5) 2, 4, 445, 1929.

13. W. Kessenich, Eine Bemerkung über die angenäherte Berechnung des Ausdruckes, $\dfrac{I_0(x)}{x I_0'(x)}$, Ann. Phys., (5) 5, 5, 606, 1930.

14. E. V. Bogoslovsky and V. Serkov, On the advisability of painting the buses of distribution devices black, Elektricheskie stantsii, No. 9, November 1933.

15. E. V. Bogoslovsky, An unbalanced-bridge circuit for automatic voltage regulation, Nauchnye zapiski N.-i. instituta, 1936.

16. E. V. Bogoslovsky, with Zheverzheeva and Lysenko, Measurement of a portion of the electric spectrum of water, Nauchnye zapiski N.-i. instituta, 1936.

17. E. V. Bogoslovsky, Principles and development of modern radiotelegraphy and telephony, Proceedings of the Regional Conference on the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of the South-East, 1925.