Ilia Afanasevich Kibel

Born Oct. 6 (19), 1904, in Saratov; died Sept. 5, 1970, in Moscow. Soviet mathematician and meteorologist and specialist in fluid mechanics. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943).

Kibel’ graduated from the University of Saratov in 1925. From 1925 to 1943 he worked at the Main Geophysical Observatory, from 1943 to 1958 at the Central Forecasting Institute (from 1949 as a professor), from 1958 to 1961 at the Institute of Applied Geophysics, and from 1961 at the Meteorological Computing Center of the USSR (the Hydrometeorological Center of the USSR since 1965).

The principal works of Kibel’ were devoted to hydrodynamic short-range weather forecasting, gas dynamics, and theoretical mesometeorology (local weather forecasts). In 1940 he worked out a closed simplified system of equations for dynamic meteorology and was the first to propose a practical method of hydrodynamic forecasting of pressure and temperature fields for a range on the order of 24 hours. He also proposed a method of using the complete equations of hydrothermodynamics in weather forecasting (1955–58). Kibel’ founded the school of hydrodynamic short-range weather forecasting. A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1941), he was awarded the Order of Lenin and two other orders, as well as medals.