Brounov, Petr Ivanovich

Brounov, Petr Ivanovich 

Born Dec. 21, 1852 (Jan 1, 1853), in St. Petersburg; died Apr. 24, 1927, in Leningrad. Soviet meteorologist and agricultural meteorologist.

Brounov graduated from the University of St. Petersburg (1875). From 1877 to 1880 he worked at the Main Physical Observatory in the division of the weather service. He was a professor at the universities of Kiev (1890) and St. Petersburg (1900). Brounov organized the Pridneprov’e network of meteorological stations. In 1897 he became the head of the meteorological bureau of the Department of Agriculture. In 1878 he proposed methods of predicting the movement of cyclones by pressure changes and explained the formation and movement of cyclones. Brounov discovered the “critical periods” in the life of cultivated plants and explained how the distribution of moisture and the average air pressure on earth is connected with the distribution of various types of soil. He prepared an atlas of the earth’s isoclimatic zones in 1925. Brounov introduced the concept of the earth’s “outer” (geographical) covering, which is the subject of physical geography as a science.

WORKS

“Postupatel’noe dvizhenie tsiklonov i antitsiklonov v Evrope i preimushchestvenno v Rossii.” Zap. imp. Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, 1882, vol. 12, issue 1.
“Meteorologiia kak nauka o vikhrevykh dvizheniiakh vozdukha.” Morskoi sbornik, 1897, no. 3.
Kurs fizicheskoi geografii, 2nd ed. St. Petersburg, 1917.
Atmosfernaia optika. Moscow, 1924.
Kurs meteorologii. Moscow, 1927.
“Petr Ivanovich Brounov (Avtobiografiia).” Tr. po sel’ skokhoziaistvennoi meteorologii, 1928, issue 20.

REFERENCE

Maksimov, S. A. P. I. Brounov—osnovopolozhnik sel’skokhoziaistvennoi meteorologii. Leningrad, 1952. (Bibliography of Brounov’s works.)