Mikhail Vasilevich Ostrogradski was born
on September 24th, 1801 in Pashennaya, and died on
January 1st, 1862 in Poltava (now Ukraine). Ostrogradski attended the Poltava Gymnasium secondary
school. When the time came for him to leave, he expressed
a wish to have a military career. However his family was
not wealthy and it was felt that a soldier's pay was not
good enough. Eventually it was decided that he should
take up a career in the civil service and in order to
obtain a high ranking position a university education was
necessary. Ostrogradski entered the University of
Kharkov in 1816 and studied physics and mathematics. In
1820, he took and passed the exams necessary for his
degree but the minister of religious affairs and national
education refused to confirm the decision and required
him to retake the examinations. Ostrogradski refused to
retake the examinations and never received his degree. He
left Russia to study in Paris. There, between 1822 and
1827, he attended lectures by Laplace, Fourier, Legendre,
Poisson, Binet and Cauchy. He made rapid progress in
Paris and soon began to publish papers in the Paris
Academy. His papers at this time show the influence of
the mathematicians in Paris and he wrote on physics and
the integral calculus. These papers were later
incorporated in a major work on hydrodynamics with he
published in Paris in 1832. His other results on residue
theory appeared in
Cauchy's works.
Ostrogradski
went to St Petersburg in 1828. He presented three
important papers on the theory of heat, double integrals
and potential theory to the Academy of Sciences. Largely
on the strength of these papers he was elected an
academician in the applied mathematics section. He made
important contributions to partial differential equations,
elasticity and to algebra publishing over 80 reports and
giving lectures. His work on algebra was an extension of
Abel's work on algebraic
functions and their integrals. Ostrogradski aimed high
in his research and his object was to provide a combined
theory of hydrodynamics, elasticity, heat and electricity.
Of course this was far beyond what could be achieved but,
by aiming at a grand scheme, he made major developments
in a wide range of areas. In 1840 he wrote on ballistics
introducing the topic to Russia. His important work on
ordinary differential equations considered methods of
solution of non-linear equations which involved power
series expansions in a parameter alpha. From 1847 he was
chief inspector for the teaching of mathematical sciences
in military schools. He wrote many fine textbooks and
established the conditions which allowed Chebyshev's
school to flourish in St Petersburg. He could also be
considered as the founder of the Russian school of
theoretical mechanics.
