Mikhail Fedorovich Subbotin | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1893-06-29)June 29, 1893 |
| Died | December 26, 1966(1966-12-26) (aged 73) |
| Citizenship | Russian,Soviet |
| Education | Warsaw University,Donskoy Polytechnic Institute (Novocherkassk) |
| Known for | Celestial mechanics |
| Awards | Copernicus Scholarship,Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.,Order of the Red Banner of Labor andOrder of Lenin |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematician |
Mikhail Fedorovich Subbotin (Russian:Михаил Фёдорович Субботин, 29 June 1893 – 26 December 1966) was aSovietmathematician andastronomer whocalculated orbits of planets andcomets. He worked on general properties of motion in then-body problem.
Subbotin was born on 29 June 1893 in Ostrolenka, Russian Empire (nowOstrołęka, Poland).[1]
Mikhail Fedorovich Subbotin studied in the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at theUniversity of Warsaw in 1910 and graduated in 1914. He had an interest also in astronomy and worked as a calculator at the university observatory. After graduating he continued on as a junior astronomer. His father was an army officer, Fedor Subbotin.[2]
After the German army invaded Poland, the University of Warsaw was evacuated toRostov-on-Don in 1915. Subbotin completed hismaster's degree there in 1917. During this time he published two papers, “On the determination of singular points of analytic functions” and another on singular points of certaindifferential equations.He then moved to theDonskoy Polytechnic Institute (Novocherkassk) where he ultimately was appointed a professor of mathematics. In 1922, he accepted an offer to go work at theCentral Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences as Director inTashkent.[2]Before the outbreak of World War II he worked at various astronomical institutions inLeningrad (Saint Petersburg). Subbotin stayed in Leningrad and almost starved to death during the siege by the Germans and was finally evacuated in February 1942 toSverdlovsk to recover. Near the end of 1942 Subbotin became the Director of the Leningrad Astronomical Institute, relocated toSaratov before it was finally brought back to Leningrad after the German withdrawal.[3] He received theOrder of the Red Banner of Labor (06/10/1945). In 1963 he was awarded theOrder of Lenin.[4]
Subbotin died on 26 December 1966 in then Leningrad, USSR (nowSaint Petersburg, Russia). A memorial plaque was installed at his house at Moskovsky Prospect 206 in 1971 (architect V. V. Isaeva)[5]
He started his career working on thetheory of functions and probability. He worked on the creation of a catalog of faint stars.[4] As he moved more to astronomy he concentrated oncelestial mechanics to devise new methods to calculate orbits from three observations based on solving theEuler–Lambert equations.[2][6][7]“... Subbotin not only showed the possibility of improving the convergence of the trigonometric series by which the behaviour of perturbing forces is represented, but also gave an expression for determiningLaplace coefficients and presented formulas for computing the coefficients of the necessary members of the trigonometric series.”[4]
Subbotin wrote a three-volume work called “Course in Celestial Mechanics" (1933–49), in which for the first time in Russian the main questions of celestial mechanics were described in detail. He was the author of a number of fundamental studies on the history of astronomy. He was the editor-in-chief of the Astronomical Yearbook of the USSR, published by the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy of theAcademy of Sciences of the USSR.
He engaged in painting, in which he reached the level of a professional artist.
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