Levitskii, Grigorii Vasilevich

Levitskii, Grigorii Vasil’evich 

Born Oct. 27, 1852, in Kharkov; died 1918. Russian astronomer.

Levitskii graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1874. He worked at the Pulkovo Observatory, first as a supernumerary astronomer; subsequently, beginning in 1876, he worked on astronomical calculations. He was appointed docent of the University of Kharkov in 1879 and assisted in the founding of the Kharkov Observatory. In 1894 he was appointed a professor at the University of Iur’ev and from 1898 to 1908 was director of the Iur’ev Observatory. Levitskii wrote a history of these two observatories. He studied the small oscillations of the earth’s crust and attempted to find criteria for predicting earthquakes. Levitskii was president of the Russian Astronomical Society from 1915 to 1918.