Jean Alexander Heinrich Clapier de Colongue
Jean Alexander Heinrich Clapier de Colongue (Russian: Ivan Petrovich de-Kolong; Иван Петрович де-Колонг; Latvian: Johans Aleksandrs Heinrihs Klapje de Kolongs) (6 March [O.S. 22 February] 1838–26 May [O.S. 13 May] 1901) was a Baltic German marine engineer and founder of a theory of magnetic deviation for magnetic compasses, living and working in Imperial Russia.[1]
Jean Alexander Heinrich Clapier de Colongue | |
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Born | 6 March [O.S. 22 February] 1838 |
Died | 26 May [O.S. 13 May] 1901 |
Biography
Ivan Petrovich de Collong was born in 1839 in Dünaburg (now Daugavpils) into a Baltic German noble family originally of Franco-Portuguese origin. He studied at the Naval Academy in Saint Petersburg and from 1870 he worked there as a lecturer. Starting in 1878 he was head of the Navy's Main Hydrographical Administration. In 1875, he constructed a deflector (a new type of compass baffle) and later improved upon its design.
De Collong was a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (from 1896) and a Major-General of the Imperial Russian Navy. He was awarded the Lomonosov Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
References
- Колонг Иван Петрович in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969–1978 (in Russian)
External links
- Memoirs of Alexei Krylov (in Russian)
- Genealogy handbook of Baltic nobility Clapier de Colongue's (in German)