Kavraiskii, Vladimir Vladimirovich

Born Apr. 10 (22), 1884, in the village of Zherebiatnikovo in Simbirsk Province; died Feb. 26, 1954, in Leningrad. Soviet geodesist, cartographer, and astronomer.

Kavraiskii graduated from the University of Kharkov in 1916. In 1921 he began work at the Naval Academy, where in 1935 he became a professor and in 1944 a rear admiral of the engineers. He generalized the lines-of-position method for determining the position of a ship at sea and evaluating the precision of such a determination. He worked out a method, now named after him, for combined determination of time and latitude based on corresponding elevations of stars. His main works are on mathematical cartography. He invented several optical instruments, including the Kavraiskii tiltmeter and the Kavraiskii direction finder. He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1952, the Order of Lenin, three other orders, and medals.