Viktor Lvovich Kirpichov (; ,

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

– ,

) was a

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

engineer, physicist, and educational organizer, known especially for his work on applied and structural mechanics as well as for establishing the foundations for technical education in the

Early biography

Viktor Lvovich Kirpichov belonged to

Russian nobility The Russian nobility or ''dvoryanstvo'' () arose in the Middle Ages. In 1914, it consisted of approximately 1,900,000 members, out of a total population of 138,200,000. Up until the February Revolution of 1917, the Russian noble estates staffed ...

from

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

. He graduated from the

Polotsk Polotsk () or Polatsk () is a town in Vitebsk Region, Belarus. It is situated on the Dvina River and serves as the administrative center of Polotsk District. Polotsk is served by Polotsk Airport and Borovitsy air base. As of 2025, it has a pop ...

military school (1862) and St.Michael artillery school in

(1863). In 1863–1870 he was in the faculty of

Kronstadt Kronstadt (, ) is a Russian administrative divisions of Saint Petersburg, port city in Kronshtadtsky District of the federal cities of Russia, federal city of Saint Petersburg, located on Kotlin Island, west of Saint Petersburg, near the head ...

military academy where he taught material science and mechanics. In 1873 he was a postdoc student of

Gustav Kirchhoff Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (; 12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German chemist, mathematician, physicist, and spectroscopist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy and the emission of black-body ...

in Germany. After that, until his move to Ukraine in 1885, he was a professor at Saint Petersburg Technological Institute. In 1882, he was responsible for investigation of the

Borki train disaster The Borki train disaster occurred on near Borki station in Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Birky, Ukraine), south of Kursk, when the imperial train carrying Emperor Alexander III of Russia and his family from Crimea to ...

University founder in the south of the Russian Empire

Viktor Kirpichov is the most widely known in modern-day

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

as the founder and first rector of two prominent technical universities in this country (then a part of the Russian Empire): * Kharkov Polytechnic Institute of Emperor Alexander III (a rector in 1885–1898) * Kiev Polytechnic Institute of Emperor Alexander II (a rector in 1898–1902) Founding these universities was a part of wide program of technical education in the Russian Empire set up by

Dmitriy Mendeleev Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev ( ; ) was a Russian chemist known for formulating the periodic law and creating a version of the periodic table of elements. He used the periodic law not only to correct the then-accepted properties of some known ele ...

. Professor Kirpichov was a prominent provider of this program serving as a member of both a Working Committee for elaborating the project of common plan for professional education in the Russian Empire (1884), and the Committee for higher education (1897).

USA visit

In 1893, Kirpichov was invited to USA, where he was an expert at the Chicago world's fair and visited numerous engineering facilities.

Later years

During his last years, Professor Kirpichov returned to Saint Petersburg, where he taught applied mechanics in Saint Petersburg Technological Institute. He remained a Honored Professor of Kiev Polytechnic Institute until the end of his life. He was buried at the Lutheran

Volkovo Cemetery The Volkovo Cemetery (also Volkovskoe) ( or Во́лково кла́дбище) is one of the largest and oldest non- Orthodox cemeteries in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Until the early 20th century it was one of the main burial grounds for Lutheran ...

References

Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kirpichov, Viktor Engineers from Saint Petersburg Academic staff of Military Engineering-Technical University 1845 births 1913 deaths Engineers from the Russian Empire Physicists from the Russian Empire Kyiv Polytechnic Institute rectors Privy Councillor (Russian Empire) Academic staff of the Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology Burials at Volkovo Cemetery