Boris Galerkin was a Russian and Soviet mathematician and engineer. He was a professor at the Petersburg Polytechnical Institute and an academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
Background
Boris Galerkin was born on March 4, 1871, in Polotsk, Russian Empire (now Polotsk, Belarus). He was the son of Girsh-Shleym Galerkin and Perla Basia Galerkina. His parents owned a house in the town, but the homecraft they made did not bring enough money.
Education
Boris had finished school in Polotsk, but still needed the exams from an additional year which granted him the right to continue education at a higher level. He passed those in Minsk in 1893, as an external student. He then entered the mechanics department of the Petersburg Technological Institute. He graduated in 1899.
During his studies at the Petersburg Technological Institute Galerkin had to support himself by giving private lessons. After graduating in 1899 Galerkin entered the Kharkov Locomotive Building Mechanical Plant. In 1903 he moved to St. Petersburg and started work in the Northern Mechanical and Boiler Plant as manager of the technical section. He quickly became known in engineering circles.
From 1909 to 1914 Galerkin studied Russian and foreign factories and engineering installations. He visited Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria, becoming acquainted with the outstanding examples of foreign technology. In 1909 Galerkin was invited to teach at the Petersburg Polytechnical Institute. He was chosen head of the department of structural mechanics there in 1920. From 1923 to 1929 he was dean of the structural engineering department. During this period Galerkin was professor of the theory of elasticity at the Leningrad Institute of Communications Engineers and professor of structural mechanics at Leningrad University. From 1940 to 1945 he headed the Institute of Mechanics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
Galerkin’s scientific work was devoted to difficult problems in the theory of elasticity and structural mechanics. His first scientific work, Theory of Longitudinal Curvature, appeared in 1909. Galerkin extended the theory of longitudinal curvature, created by Leonhard Euler, to multistage uprights formed by the joining of a series of vertical and horizontal rods.
In his second work, Curvature and Compression, Galerkin investigated the curvature of a rod strengthened at one end by the action of force applied, parallel to the axis, to the free end with eccentricity (or force applied at any angle to the axis). Galerkin’s early works in the area of longitudinal curvature opened broad possibilities for the application of the theory of longitudinal curvature to the calculation of the stability of bridges, the frames of buildings, and similar systems.
From 1915 to 1917, in connection with the beginning of the use of beamless floors in industrial and civil construction, Galerkin made his first profound research in the theory of the curvature of thin plates. He devoted many years of his life to its development. Galerkin’s many works in this field were generalized in the monograph Elastic Thin Plates, published in 1933. In 1915 Galerkin proposed a method for the approximate integration of differential equations that was widely used for the solution of problems in mathematical physics and technology. It became known as Galerkin’s method.
A series of works by Galerkin on the theory of torsion and the curve of prismatic rods, published in 1919-1927, developed an interesting problem in the theory of elasticity. In 1930-1931 his fundamental works on the theory of elasticity, which contain a general solution of three-dimensional problems, appeared.
Galerkin was a consultant in the planning and building of many of the Soviet Union’s largest hydrostations. In 1929, in connection with the building of the Dnepr dam and hydroelectric station, Galerkin investigated stress in dams and breast walls with trapezoidal profile. His results were used in planning the dam.
In 1899, the year of graduating from the institute, Galerkin became a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Party (which would become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). This provides a plausible explanation for his frequent job changes. He even participated in organizing the Union of Engineers in St. Petersburg and, in 1905 he was arrested for organizing a strike among the engineers.
Membership
In 1935 Galerkin was elected an active member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
Soviet Academy of Sciences
,
USSR
1935 - 1945
Connections
Galerkin married Revekka Treivas, a second niece. They did not have any children.