Background
Platon Sergeevich Poretsky was born on October 3 (15), 1846, in Elisavetgrad (now Kirovograd), Russian Empire. He was the son of a military physician.
Platon Sergeevich Poretsky (October 3, 1846 in Elisavetgrad – August 9, 1907 in Chernihiv Governorate) was a noted Russian astronomer, mathematician, and logician.
Poltava Gymnasium, Poltava, Ukraine
Poretsky graduated from the Poltava Gymnasium.
Karazin University, Kharkiv, Ukraine
Poretsky graduated from the University of Kharkiv in 1870.
Russian: Платон Серге́евич Порецкий
Astronomer logician mathematician scientist
Platon Sergeevich Poretsky was born on October 3 (15), 1846, in Elisavetgrad (now Kirovograd), Russian Empire. He was the son of a military physician.
Poretsky graduated from the Poltava Gymnasium and from the Physical-Mathematical Faculty of Kharkiv University. In 1886 he defended a thesis for his master’s degree, the theoretical portion of which dealt with reducing the number of unknowns and equations for certain systems of cyclic equations that occur in practical astronomy. For this work, he was awarded a doctorate in astronomy.
In 1870 Poretsky was attached to the chair of astronomy at the University of Kharkov to prepare for a professorship. For several years Poretsky worked as an astronomer-observer at the Kharkov Observatory and, from 1876, at Kazan University, where he conducted observations of stars in the Kazan zone according to the program of the International Astronomical Society.
After Poretsky became Privatdozent at Kazan University, in 1887-1888, for the first time in Russia, he lectured on mathematical logic, in which he had become interested soon after going to Kazan through the influence of A. V. Vasiliev.
From 1882 to 1888 Poretsky was secretary and treasurer of the Physical-Mathematical Section of the Kazan Society of Natural Science, supervising the publication of its Proceedings; for several years he edited a liberal newspaper, Kazansky telegraf, sometimes publishing in it his translations of Pierre Beranger’s poems. At the beginning of 1889 poor health forced Poretsky to retire, but he continued his research in mathematical logic for the rest of his life.