Ivan Yarkousky was a Russian engineer-technologist, researcher in physics, chemistry, meteorology, aeronautics. He is particularly known for the mechanical explanation of gravity, the Yarkovsky effect and the YORP effect.
Background
Yarkousky was born on May 12, 1844, in the town of Asveja in the Drissa district of the Vitsebsk Province (now in the Verkhnyadzvinsk district of the Vitsebsk Region), Belarus. He was a descendant of an old Szlachta (gentry) family of the Korsak coat of arms; son of Osip Janovic.
Education
Ivan received his primary education at the Saints Peter and Paul church school in Moscow. He finished the Alexandriisky cadet school for orphans in Moscow in 1868 and graduated from the St. Petersburg Technological Institute as a 1st-grade technologist in 1870. In two years, having defended his dissertation The Design of a Machine for Water Supply and Theoretical Study of Its Mechanism, he was granted the rank of engineer-technologist.
In 1872 Ivan began working in Minsk as a foreman at the railway workshops of Moscow-Brest Railway. He held the position for two years, becoming a depot head in Smolensk in 1874. Two years later Yarkousky was appointed as a head of a carriage repair shop of Moscow-Brest Railway in Moscow, Russia. From 1894 he was a manager at the Nevski mechanical works and at the shipbuilding works. Then Yarkousky was an assistant chief manager at the Maltsev Joint-Stock Company works in 1897 - 1901.
In 1887, Ivan Yarkousky, trying to explain the universal gravity, suggested his ‘kinetic hypothesis’. The author’s consolidated conclusions were united by the main idea and represented as a philosophical combination of individual scientific ideas related to various natural phenomena.
Already in the summer of 1888 I. Yarkousky’s work Universal Gravity as a Result of Solid Matter Formation Inside the Celestial Bodies: a Kinetic Hypothesis was published, first in French, then in 1889, revised and enlarged, in Russian. This work suggested a mechanical explanation of gravity. Ivan Yarkousky regarded gravity as the result of the existence of ordered motion of ether particles and their absorption through the surface of any body. He deduced a formula of the universal law of gravity which differed from that of Newton by the variable value of proportionality factor.
Proceeding from the kinetic hypothesis, he suggested a theoretical conception of structure both of matter and of intermolecular forces, of the periodic nature of chemical elements and their physical and chemical properties. He suggested original hypotheses regarding the Earth magnetism, the volcanic activity, the evolution of stars. I. Yarkousky’s ideas that inter-molecular forces result from the exchange interaction of ether atoms have found nowdays their new interpretation based on quantum-mechanical conceptions. His thoughts that periodicity of the elements’ properties is explained by similarity of atomic structures found proof in D. Mendeleyev’s law of periodic structure of atom shells. The possibility of energy irradiation by a body owing to its internal structure was confirmed years later by the discovery of radium. I. Yarkovsky’s kinetic hypothesis is, in fact, a programme of combination of gravitational and electromagnetic fields based on the notion of ether.
In 1889 the scientist suggested the design of a vertical water-pipe steam converter, which was granted a monopoly for 10 years. He performed the research of the lubricants’ optimal parameters and studied the effect of various kinds of oil on the reduction of friction compensation effort. Yarkousky designed a device for free-fall acceleration measurements, which he called a ‘gravitascope’; conducted research in aerodynamics; discovered experimentally the dependence relationship between air drag and airfoil shape, inclination and speed of motion; deduced the formula for aerodynamic resistance and lifting force calculation, similar to those developed by M. Zhukovsky. Yarkousky spent the final months of his life in Germany and died in a Heidelberg hospital.
Achievements
Membership
Ivan was a member of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society, Russian Society of Natural History, Ethnography and Anthropology Amateurs, Russian Technical Society, Society of Technologists.
Connections
Ivan Yarkousky married Elena Alexandrovna Shendzikovskaja. They had a son, Vitold.