Feliks Iasinskii

Born Sept. 15 (27), 1856, in Warsaw; died Nov. 18 (30), 1899, in St. Petersburg. Russian engineer and specialist in structural mechanics.

Iasinskii graduated from the St. Petersburg Institute of Railroad Engineers in 1877 and was named a professor there in 1896. Between 1878 and 1889 he worked as an engineer with the St. Petersburg-Warsaw Railroad and as a mining engineer in Vilnius. He was appointed head of the technical section of the St. Petersburg-Moscow Railroad in 1890. Between that time and 1892, Iaşinskii, using new design techniques and unique engineering solutions for structural problems, developed plans for rebuilding track, bridges, and other structures along the route.

In his study Research in the Development of a Theory of Buckling, which was published in 1894, Iaşinskii was the first to substantiate the engineering significance of the theory of stability of compressed columns, to develop a formula for determining the critical forces associated with the elasticity of compressed columns, and to propose a practical method of designing columns that are to be subjected to such stress. Iaşinskii’s students included N. N. Mitinskii, E. O. Paton, G. P. Perederii, and S. P. Timoshenko.