"Father of Russian Aviation"
And then a miracle happened. The new government remembered the dying aviation science in Russia. In December 1918, a government decree signed by V.I. Lenin (by the way, he called NE Zhukovsky “the father of Russian aviation”), the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) was created and Professor Zhukovsky was approved as its head. The impetus for this decision was the Civil War. The White armies had their pilots for aircraft supplied by France and England. Soviet Russia got a ruined fleet of aircraft. It was necessary to teach pilots and aircraft mechanics, because without them the plane would not fly. The Moscow Aviation College was created, then transformed into the Air Force Academy. To create this educational institution and attracted Zhukovsky. But Zhukovsky immediately raised the question of creating a scientific institute for hydroaerodynamics. And Lenin went forward: the authority of Nikolai Yegorovich Zhukovsky in the world of science was unusually great. The institute was created. First, in small rooms on the Yauza, within the framework of the same MVTU, and in the thirties, TsAGI stepped outside Moscow. The necessary site was found on lands previously owned by the Moscow-Ryazan road, in the vicinity of the quiet station Rest. The name suggests that earlier there were quiet summer cottages, but large aviation came here, and the village of Stakhanovo arose in the 30s, a test airfield was built. TsAGI has launched the construction of giant wind tunnels, the scale of which is now amazing.
During the war, Hitler ordered not to bomb TsAGI and its settlement at the request of German scientists, who believed that it was necessary to seize this outstanding scientific center named after Professor Zhukovsky as a whole. But they failed to capture it.
In 1947, the village of Stakhanovo received city status, it was called the city of Zhukovsky. In Soviet times, a huge number of aviation firms, research institutes and design bureaus budged off TsAGI and LII (Flight Research Institute). Here Soviet aviation and space science were forged, the legendary Buran was tested. Even the Cosmonaut Training Center was initially located on the territory of LII.
... I, who was born and grew up in the town of Zhukovsky near Moscow, named after our great aerodynamic scientist, academician Nikolai Yegorovich Zhukovsky, from early childhood I remember a huge granite monument to this man in the central city square. His whole figure is filled with amazing power. At the foot of the monument, the words of N.E. Zhukovsky: "A man will fly, relying not on the strength of his muscles, but on the strength of his mind." We can say that Nikolai Egorovich was the embodiment of this power ...
He was a romantic. This somehow does not agree with the image of a venerable scientist, a theorist, but Nikolai Egorovich was never an armchair scientist. He was always in motion, he studied the flight of birds, the laws of motion of water flows, the movement of planets in outer space. Movement in nature in general and became the object of his close study, the main business of his life. This passion for the study of the mechanical laws of motion was passed on to Nikolai Zhukovsky, apparently from his father, a railway engineer who was famous in Russia in the middle of the 19th century. Then the first railways in Russia began to be built, and the father of the future scientist built the Nizhny Novgorod road. Under Vladimir, in the village Orekhovo, he bought himself a small estate. There 17 January (in a new style) 1847, and his son Nikolay Yegorovich Zhukovsky was born.
If his parents knew that exactly one hundred years later, in 1947, a city would appear in the Moscow region - the center of aviation science, named after their son! And probably they would be very surprised, because little Nikolai Zhukovsky didn’t shine at all with his learning abilities, for example, he was badly given a mathematician when he was sent to 4-th Moscow men's gymnasium, where Malinin, the famous textbook teacher, taught mathematics.
Anna Nikolaevna, the mother of a small high-school student, a devout woman, brought her son to the Moscow saint himself, Metropolitan Philaret, and he blessed the boy to study. A miracle, but in a young student a mathematical talent has awakened!
And it is possible that the fact that they began to teach geometry from the 3 class of the gymnasium there also played a role, and this visual science fell in love with Nikolai Zhukovsky, this corresponded to the practical cast of his mind. Since then, Nikolai Egorovich will be engaged in applied sciences all his life and will himself create a new science - aerodynamics.
But as for his romantic inclinations, then what could be more romantic in nature than the flight of birds, their soaring in the expanse of heaven? But where the poet, the namesake of the scientist, Vasily Zhukovsky saw "a light, light breeze that blows so gently," the scientist Nikolai Zhukovsky wanted to see the laws by which this breeze is capable of raising large birds and massive aircraft into the sky. Such, for example, as the apparatus of the famous German inventor Otto Lilienthal, with whom Nikolai Egorovich was well acquainted. He even purchased his glider for study at the Moscow Higher Technical School, where he taught mechanics. The road to this was, of course, not fast. After graduating from Moscow University with a degree in applied mechanics in 1867, he intended to continue his father's railway business and went to St. Petersburg to study at the Institute of Railway Engineers. But he did not succeed in this: he overstrained himself, became ill with a nervous illness, and doctors forbade him to work in sciences for a year. He went to the estate of his parents in the Vladimir region, where he regained his strength and decided not to leave Moscow anymore.
Moscow was his city. He taught physics at the 2-th Women's High School, and then, from 1872, he began to teach mathematics at the Moscow Technical School (the future famous Baumanka). MVTU and became his fortress, his scientific stronghold, which he will not change until the end of his days. There, within the walls of the Moscow Higher Technical School, the Aerohydrodynamic Institute was born, which began with a small laboratory located at first ... in the dining room of the professorial apartment of Zhukovsky, where his museum is now located, on the banks of the small Yauza River. But Zhukovsky also taught at Moscow University, where in 1882, he was awarded a Ph.D. in applied mechanics for the study "On the Strength of Motion".
As an applied scientist, Zhukovsky dealt with a variety of issues. He developed the theory of the motion of ships with jet propulsion. At that time, the first large steel vessels, armadillos, and then battleships began to be built in Russia. For them, it was necessary to find the best hull shape and parameters of the propeller. All this had to be calculated, to carry out numerous tests. As an applied mathematician, Zhukovsky was unparalleled; it seems he could calculate everything, including the laws of water movement in water pipes. The first water supply system was built in Moscow - a consultation of a scientist was needed because the pipes could not withstand the pressure of the water, they collapsed, it was necessary to identify the reason for this. Zhukovsky is developing a theory of water hammer, proposes new valves and taps for water, so that they do not immediately block the water, thus giving rise to this notorious water hammer, but gradually, smoothly. So there were those cranes that we use so far.
In general, the scientist owns many inventions, which he did not patent, but did in general possession completely disinterestedly, publishing them in open reports. This, too, was a feature of this person that was strange to our present "market" consciousness - selflessness, a feature, however, always peculiar to the best representatives of the Russian intelligentsia.
And by the way, it was always their habit to dream, to direct their eyes towards the sky, to imagine a time when a person would gain the ability to fly. Perhaps this has always been inherent in the Russian consciousness, for it is known (from the manuscript of Daniel Zatochnik) that even in the 13th century, on holidays, the Russian people made wings on wooden frames with silk fabric stretched over them and jumped from high towers, landing safely. It was kind of popular fun.
It has been several centuries since those times, and in the Vladimir places, local peasants could see a certain man on a bicycle rolling on rural roads ... with wooden wings fastened behind their backs! And it was the young scientist Nikolai Zhukovsky, who thus studied the lifting force of the artificial wing.
It is known that before him the lifting force of the apparatus was heavier than air was studied by his predecessor in aviation science, naval officer A.F. Mozhaisky, who built something like a huge kite, and, accelerating on a troika of horses, rose on the kite into the air. Subsequently, he built the world's first aircraft with a steam engine, which flew several tens of meters. However, the documents of this invention were laid on the shelf, classified, and Zhukovsky did not know anything about the work of Mozhaisky, he had to start everything from scratch. That is why he was so interested in the experiences of Otto Lilienthal and was very worried about his death in 1896. The death of Lilienthal, which crashed during one of its flights, was the first death of a "flying man", the first victim on the way of all mankind to the sky ...
Maybe Lilienthal, who was not a scientist, but rather a practicing enthusiast, would have survived if he had studied the works of the Russian scientist Zhukovsky on flight theory. And Zhukovsky in 1890 published his first study, “On the theory of flying,” and then the work “On the soaring of birds” in 1891. This was the beginning of aviation science. But the main discovery of the aerodynamics scientist was the work "On the attached whirlwinds", where Zhukovsky derived the lifting formula - the main condition for the flight of the device is heavier than air. Further, up to 1918, Zhukovsky developed the theory of the propeller. These works of the scientist have not lost their relevance to this day.
Gradually, a circle of young scientists, his students, who actively began to study aerodynamics, a new science created by their teacher, formed around Zhukovsky. From this circle came the future great Soviet aircraft designer Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev, who raised aviation in the USSR to an immeasurable height. It so happened that Tupolev opened a monument to his teacher in the city of Zhukovsky in 1969 year. But the path to this was still very far away. The development of aviation immediately required huge investments, which only the state could give. It required the construction of huge laboratories, powerful wind tunnels that created a stream of air of such strength that would reproduce the stream of air that flows around the aircraft in flight. It means that powerful fans were needed, huge costs of electricity. Before the revolution, the state did not invest money in the development of aerodynamic science; in essence, it did not go beyond the boundaries of university laboratories.
Found a representative of domestic business, which helped Zhukovsky. He was a famous member of the richest family of Old Believers merchants, Dmitry Pavlovich Ryabushinsky. A talented young scientist, he studied with Zhukovsky at the Department of Applied and Theoretical Mechanics at Moscow State University, opened the Aerodynamic Institute in Kuchino near Moscow (now the district of Balashikha) with his own money.
A few workshop hangars, the scope, of course, is small, but this amateur institute, or rather, a laboratory taken out of the city limits, was a prototype of the future TsAGI, but it also lacked funds for full-fledged scientific developments. However, the institute successfully worked until 1920, produced five collections of his works, which, we note, is not enough for a reputable scientific institution, then was nationalized at the request of Ryabushinsky himself and attached to the State Geophysical Research Institute. This institute had no significant influence on the scientific fate of Zhukovsky himself. Nevertheless, his native MVTU and the department of mechanics at Moscow State University always remained the main platforms for Professor Zhukovsky, where the first large wind tunnel for testing aircraft models was built by him and his students in the university laboratory.
... In 2009, the famous Air Force Engineering Academy named after Professor Zhukovsky was eliminated by the former leadership of the Ministry of Defense, apparently out of use ... Now, unfortunately, it is badly stunned, it was revived in Voronezh as the Air Force Academy named after Professor N.Ye. Zhukovsky and Yu.A. Gagarin.
Yes, now aviation science in Russia is in a certain corral. Aviation institutes remained, but the number of personnel working in them was greatly reduced. The test airfield LII is converted into a commercial airport "Zhukovsky". Now there are very few new models of domestic aircraft. For some reason, even the name of our great scientist Zhukovsky is called a plane from the Boeing series. But does this diminish the glory of Nikolai Egorovich? And did he ever chase fame? .. He did everything he could in his life and died quietly after a serious illness in March 1921. He was buried at Donskoy Cemetery of the capital. At his funeral, his student, academician SA Chaplygin, Zhukovsky’s successor as TsAGI director, said: “With his bright, powerful personality he united both the highest mathematical knowledge and engineering sciences. He was the best combination of science and technology, he was almost a university.
Not distracting anything transient, only to the best of inevitable necessity, paying tribute to the needs of life, he devoted all his gigantic powers to scientific work. His whole nature was devotedly devoted to this work. This is what explains the tremendous wealth of the heritage that passes from him to us.
With his clear, surprisingly transparent mind, he was sometimes able to resolve and bring such light into dark, seemingly hopeless questions with one stroke of the pen that after his word everything became convex and clear ...
He created not a school, but schools. "
And he was a man flying into the future - we add from ourselves. There would be more such people in Russia today!
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