Career
Ivan Petrovich de Collong was born in 1839 in Dünaburg (now Daugavpils) into a Baltic German noble family originally of Franco-Portuguese origin. He studied at the Naval Academy in Saint St. Petersburg and from 1870 he worked there as a lecturer. Starting in 1878 he was head of the Navy"s Main Hydrographical Administration.
In 1875 he constructed deflector (a new type of compass baffle) and later improved upon its design.
He was awarded the Lomonosov Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
