Spasskii, Mikhail Fedorovich

Spasskii, Mikhail Fedorovich 

Born 1809 in Zakhar-kovo, Orel Province; died Jan. 28, 1859, in Moscow. Russian meteorologist.

Spasskii graduated from the Chief Pedagogical Institute in St. Petersburg in 1836 and remained there to work. In 1839 he began working at Moscow University, where he became a professor in 1848.

In his monograph On the Climate of Moscow (1847), Spasskii formulated the tasks of climatology, defined the concept of climate, and worked out in detail statistical methods used in climatology. Independently of H. Dove, he proposed the idea of the deciding effect of atmospheric circulation on the formation of climate. In 1851 he set as a goal the prediction of weather, a subject again raised and developed by V. Bjerknes in the years 1903–13. Spasskii was also the author of works on physics and physical geography.

REFERENCES

“Spasskii M. F.” In Biograficheskiislovar’professorov i prepodavatelei Moskovskogo universiteta, part 2. Moscow, 1855.
Khrgian, A. Kh. Mikhail Fedorovich Spasskii. Moscow, 1955.