The forgotten legacy of I.S. Gromeka
Ippolit Stepanovich Gromeka (01/27/1851–10/13/1889) Russian physicist, from a Russian noble family and the son of the famous publicist and literary critic of the 1860s — 70s Stepan Stepanovich Gromeka (1823–1877).
After graduating from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University in 1873, Gromeka was left for two years to prepare for the activity of a lecturer in applied mathematics. On October 2, 1879, after defending his dissertation “Essay on the Theory of Capillary Phenomena” (“Mathematical Collection”, publishing house of the Moscow Mathematical Society, 1879), by the decision of the University Council, Ippolit Stepanovich was approved in the degree of Master of Applied Mathematics. In 1880 he was elected as an assistant professor in the Department of Analytical Mechanics at Kazan University.
On November 4, 1881, at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Kazan University, I.S. Gromeka defended his doctoral dissertation “Some cases of the motion of an incompressible fluid.” The Faculty unanimously recognizes him worthy of the degree of Doctor of Applied Mathematics. At the same faculty meeting, Ippolit Stepanovich was elected an extraordinary professor in the department of analytical mechanics. And six months later he takes the position of an ordinary professor.
After defending the dissertation, the versatile and intensive scientific and pedagogical activity of I.S. Gromeka. One after another, he publishes articles small in volume, but raising the most interesting and scientific questions related to physiology (mechanics of blood circulation) and meteorology; returns to the theory of capillarity in the study of the motion of liquid drops; engaged in the theory of differential equations, and in the last years of his life he was attracted by acoustics.
During his brief academic and teaching career, Gromeka gained well-deserved fame as an excellent professor and a remarkable scientist. With his works, Ippolit Stepanovich laid the foundations for the modern mathematical theory of capillarity (1879), the so-called helical flows and flows with transverse circulation (1882), which acquired great practical importance in hydraulic engineering, the development of meteorology, the theory of an airplane wing, the theory of propeller and ship screws, etc.
He also studied the unsteady motion of a viscous fluid (1882), the propagation of shock waves of a fluid in elastic tubes (1883), the vortex motions of a fluid on the surface of a sphere (1885), a number of cases of ideal gas equilibrium, etc.
A brief but very vivid description of his scientific activity was given by N.E. Zhukovsky: “Unfortunately, the works of I.S. Gromeka, Professor of Kazan University, are little known, but meanwhile, many issues of hydromechanics are resolved in them. He gave an original presentation of the theory of capillary phenomena, investigated the motion of vortices on a sphere, investigated the motion of drops, the motion of a viscous liquid in pipes, and found an interesting type of fluid motion, which he called helical. Some of the theorems on the steady motion of a fluid, usually attributed to Lamb*, were earlier found by Gromeka.
In addition to the above two dissertations, he wrote the following articles and essays, published mostly in the editions of the physical and mathematical section of the society of natural scientists at Kazan University: “On the theory of fluid motion in a narrow cylindrical tube” (“Scientific Notes of Kazan University, 1882); “On the speed of propagation of undulating motion in narrow tubes” (Appendix to the protocols of the section, vol. I, 1883); “On vortex motions on a sphere” (ibid., vol. III, 1885); “On the Motions of Liquid Drops” (ibid., vol. V, 1886); “Some Cases of the Equilibrium of a Perfect Gas” (ibid., vol. V, 1886); “On infinite values of integrals of linear differential equations of the second order” (ibid., vol. VI, 1887); “On the influence of uneven distribution of temperature on the propagation of sound” (“Mathematical Collection”, vol. XIV, 1889). In 1952, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR published a collection of works by this prominent fluid dynamicist.
Notes
* Sir Horace Lamb FRS, an English scientist in 1879 published his first work “Hydrodynamics”, published in Russian (translated from the 6th edition of 1932) OGIZ State Publishing House of Technical and Theoretical Literature, Moscow, 1947 Leningrad
Sources: TSB, DVD-Soft, Sigma LLC, St. Petersburg, 2003; Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron, CD: (P) 2002 IDDK, © 2002 Multimedia publishing house “Adept”; “Museum of the History of Kazan University”
