Boris Alekseevich Vvedenskii

Born Apr. 7 (19), 1893, in Moscow; died June 1, 1969, in Moscow. Soviet radiophysicist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943; corresponding member in 1934), and Hero of Socialist Labor.

After graduating from Moscow University (1915), Vvedenskii worked in a number of scientific research organizations. From 1927 to 1935 he worked at the All-Union Electrical-Engineering Institute and from 1941 to 1944 at the Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1946 to 1951 he was academician-secretary of the Division of Technical Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1944 to 1953 he was chairman of the section for scientific development work on radio-engineering problems of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1951 he became the editor in chief for the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, and all the preparatory work for the third edition of the encyclopedia was carried out under his direction. He was also the editor in chief of the Small Soviet Encyclopedia (third edition), the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Physics, the three-volume and two-volume editions of the Universal Encyclopedic Dictionary, and other publications. In 1959 he became chairman of the Scientific Council for the Soviet Encyclopedia Publishing House. In 1953 he began working at the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He became chairman of the Scientific Council on Radio Wave Propagation of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1964. He worked mainly on ultrashortwave (metric wave) propagation studies. He derived a “quadratic formula” for the propagation of ultrashort waves over the earth’s surface in a direct line of sight (1928) and proposed a “diffraction formula” to calculate the ultrashortwave field beyond the horizon (1935-36). In 1965, with M. A. Kolosov and others as joint authors, he published a computation of the field for the propagation of ultrashort waves in the far troposphere. His works on ultrashortwave propagation are summarized in his monographs Theoretical Foundations of Radio Wave Propagation (1934), Propagation of Ultrashort Radio Waves (1938, with A. G. Arenberg), and Radio Wave Guides (1946, with A. G. Arenberg). Vvedenskii collaborated in writing the monograph Far Tropospheric Propagation of Ultrashort Radio Waves (1965). In 1949 the Academy of Sciences of the USSR conferred on him the A. S. Popov gold medal. He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1952. He was awarded three Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and medals. In 1955 he became a corresponding member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin.