A A Historical and Biographical Study of the Life and Work of Railway Scientist and Engineer Dmytro Ivanovych Zhuravskyi (1821–1891)

Abstract

The article presents the results of research into the facts of the scientific biography of Dmytro Ivanovich Zhuravskyi, an outstanding railway engineer who built the first wooden railway bridges in Ukraine. This research is topical due to the lack of a comprehensive historical and biographical work devoted to the reproduction of a complete biography of D.I. Zhuravskyi. By studying archival resources, the main milestones of the scientist’s biography, the stages of his research and organizational work were clarified. The research activity and main scientific works of D.I. Zhuravskyi are analyzed; it is shown that he carried out systematic research on the construction of wooden railway bridges on the railways of the Russian Empire, participated in the organization of the railway industry and bridge-building in railway transport. A more complete scientific biography of D.I. Zhuravskyi is presented. A thematic classification of his research and technological achievements is provided: a) construction of railways, hydraulic structures; b) railway bridge construction; c) construction mechanics, resistance of materials and theory of elasticity. Documentary confirmation of the scientist’s work during the initial period of bridge construction in Ukraine, especially on the southwestern railways, is given. It consists in the fact that D.I. Zhuravsky studied the effect of tangential stresses in a beam during bending and derived a formula for their determination, which bears his name. It is shown that D.I. Zhuravsky’s works on construction mechanics created theoretic foundations of bridge construction: his merit lies not only in performing engineering works in bridge construction, but also in his being the pioneer of an experimental-theoretical method in bridge construction, based on a combination of theory and practice, i. e. a scientific method. It follows that D.I. Zhuravskyi should be considered the founder of the scientific method in bridge construction, the founder of an advanced academic school of bridge construction. D.I. Zhuravskyi’s works introduced a fundamentally new concept of material resistance — tangential stress, showed its practical importance and gave impetus to the creation of the entire theory of the stress state.