Mikhail Velikanov

Born Jan. 10 (22), 1879, in Kazan; died May 1, 1964, in Zelenogorsk, Leningrad Oblast. Soviet hydrologist; one of the founders of inland hydrology. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939) and Honored Worker in the Sciences and Technology of the RSFSR (1948).

After graduating from the St. Petersburg Institute of Transportation and Communications in 1903, Velikanov first did research on Siberian rivers (Ob’ and Enisei) and then beginning in 1913, on the Sikhona and Severnaia Dvina rivers. In 1917 he began teaching at the Tomsk Institute of Technology. He became a professor at the Moscow Institute of Surveying in 1920 and served as head of the subdepartment of inland hydrology at the Moscow Institute of Hydrometeorology from 1930. In 1935, Velikanov set up the laboratory of channel processes (which he directed until 1952) and in 1945, the subdepartment of the physics of channel processes at Moscow State University. He conceived the idea of creating flow stations, which was later extensively developed in the USSR and abroad. He determined the patterns of stream structure and the mechanism of the formation of river channels. In his course “Inland Hydrology” (1925), Velikanov was the first to provide a systematic description of this discipline. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and several medals.