Naum Ilich Idelson

Idel’son, Naum Il’ich 

Born Mar. 1 (13), 1885, in St. Petersburg; died July 14, 1951, in Leningrad. Soviet theoretical astronomer; specialist in the history of the physical and mathematical sciences.

Idel’son graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1909 and became a professor there in 1926. He was the editor in chief of the Astronomical Yearbook of the USSR (1941-13), in the supplements to which he published two works on reduced and fundamental constants in astronomy. He studied the motion of Encke’s comet and Comet Mechain-Tuttle. Idel’son wrote monographs on the theory of potential, the method of least squares, and the history of the calendar, as well as biographies of Copernicus, Gailileo, Newton, J. Lagrange, A. Clairaut, and N. I. Lobachevskii.

REFERENCE

Iakhontova, N. S. “Idel’son.” In the collection Istoriko-astronomicheskieissledovaniia, fasc. 4. Moscow, 1958. Pages 387–452. (Contains a listof Idel’son’s works.)