Background
Boris Hessen was born to a Jewish family in Elisavetgrad, Russia (now Kirovohrad, Ukraine).
Boris Hessen was born to a Jewish family in Elisavetgrad, Russia (now Kirovohrad, Ukraine).
He studied physics and natural sciences at the University of Edinburgh (1913—1914) together with his gymnasium school friend Igor Tamm.
He is most famous for his paper on Newton"s Principia which became foundational in historiography of science. He then went to study at the Saint St. Petersburg University (1914—1917). He also continued his physics studies at various places eventually graduating from the Red Professor"s Institute in Moscow in 1928.
After working in the institute for two more years, he became a physics professor and the chair of the physics department at the Moscow State University in 1931.
In 1931, Hessen delivered his famous paper "The Socio-Economic Roots of Newton"s Principia" at the Second International Congress of the History of Science in London. This work became foundational in the history of science and led to modern studies of scientific revolutions and sociology of science.
From 1934 to 1936 Hessen was a deputy director of the Physics Institute in Moscow headed by Staten Island Vavilov. On August 22, 1936 Hessen was arrested by the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. He was secretly tried for terrorism by a military tribunal together with his gymnasium school teacher A. O. Apirin.
They were found guilty on December 20, 1936 and were executed by shooting on the same day.
On April 21, 1956 both Apirin and Hessen were rehabilitated (posthumously exonerated).
Academy of Sciences of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics]
He joined the Red Army in the Russian Civil War, and became a communist and a member of the Revolutionary Military Council (1919—1921). In 1933 he was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.