Lavr Dmitrievich Proskuriakov

Proskuriakov, Lavr (Lavrentii) Dmitrievich 

Born Aug. 18 (30), 1858; died Sept. 14, 1926. Soviet scientist in the fields of bridge design and structural mechanics.

After graduating in 1884 from the St. Petersburg Institute of Railroad Engineers, Proskuriakov worked as a bridge designer and then returned to the institute as an instructor in 1887. In 1896 he was made a professor at the Moscow Engineering School (now the Moscow Institute of Railroad Transportation Engineering).

Large bridges were built from Proskuriakov’s designs across such rivers as the Narva, Zapadnyi Bug, Volkhov, Oka, Amur, and the Enisei. For his design of the bridge across the Enisei, he was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Exposition in 1900.

Proskuriakov was the first to propose the statically determinate triangular framework. He then developed the parabolic and polygonal statically determinate bridge trusses with web systems. He also proposed cantilever and arched trusses for railroad bridges. The methods of teaching structural mechanics that he introduced are used today in modern universities.

WORKS

Stroitel’naia mekhanika, parts 1–2, 6th ed. Moscow-Leningrad, 1925–26.

REFERENCE

Prokof’ev, I. P. “Lavr Dmitrievich Proskuriakov.” Stroitel’naia promyshlennost’, 1953, no. 2.