Abstract:
Fedorov Evgraf Stepanovich (1853-1919) was one of the founders of modern structural crystallography and mineralogy, creator of the scientific school, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1919). He contributed to the identification of conditions under which a group of Euclidean motions must have a translational subgroup whose vectors span the Euclidean space. In the classic work "Symmetry of regular systems of figures" (1890) for the first time deduced 230 symmetry space groups which now serve as the mathematical basis of structural analysis. He also proved that there are only 17 possible wallpaper groups which can tile a Euclidean plane. He initiated crystal-chemical analysis. He developed the classification and nomenclature of rocks and the method of crystallographic research with the help of the device he created - so-called “Fedorov's table”.
Now E.S. Fedorov is interesting to us primarily as the creator of the aforementioned system of symmetry groups of crystals, known as the Fedorov group system. Of course, it is also interesting that the Petersburg reacted to the emergence of new figures and new problems, which had the great theoretical and practical importance. It should be noted that the mathematical branch of the Academy of Sciences firmly repulsed the "onslaught": E.S. Fedorov was elected a full member of the Academy in only 1919 year (and in the same year he died, unable to withstand the conditions of the life).
Note that, not yet an academician, Evgraf Stepanovich was elected a rector of the Mining Institute (1905-1910). The election took place when the complete financial collapse of a remarkable university, which, as a result of the activities of the new rector, was able to fully recover and has now become one of the richest in today's Russia.
