Aleksandr Yakovlevich Orlov

Aleksandr Yakovlevich Orlov (6 April 1880, in Smolensk – 28 January 1954, in Kiev) was an astronomer and pioneer of geodynamics.

Aleksandr Yakovlevich Orlov
Александр Яковлевич Орлов
Aleksandr Yakovlevich Orlov (1912)
Born	(1880-04-06)April 6, 1880 Smolensk
Died	January 28, 1954(1954-01-28) (aged 73) Kiev
Scientific career
Academic advisors	Carl Charlier, Johann Wiechert

Orlov studied at Saint Petersburg University, graduating with distinction in 1902. He subsequently developed his scientific background through study at the University of Paris, at the University of Lund under Carl Charlier then at the University of Göttingen under with Johann Emil Wiechert.[1]

In 1927, Orlov was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; in 1934-38 he was a professor of astronomy at the P. K. Sternberg Astronomical Institute in Moscow. From 1938 to 1951, he again headed the Poltava Observatory, and in 1939 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.[2] He contributed the essay “Astronomic Utopias” to the 1928 book Life and Technology of the Future in which he discussed the possibility of settling on Mars and the Moon.[3]

Orlov played a major role in the creation of the Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, based in Golosseevo outside Kiev. He was appointed as the first director in 1944, a position he held until 1948, and again from 1951 to 1952.