Krylov, Mykola

Krylov, Mykola or Nikolai [Крилов, Микола or Николай], b 29 November 1879 in Saint Petersburg, d 11 May 1955 in Moscow. Mathematician, specialist in mechanics; full member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences from 1922, of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1929. A graduate of the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute and of Saint Petersburg University (PH D 1917), he was a professor at the Crimean University (1917–22), then head of the Chair of Mathematical Physics at the Institute of Technical Mathematics (later the Institute of Construction Mechanics) in Kyiv. Krylov published some 180 papers and 4 monographs. He made significant contributions to the theory of interpolation and mechanical quadrature, variational methods, approximation solvability of differential equations of mathematical physics, and convergence and error estimates of the Ritz and of his own methods. From 1932 his work with Nikolai Bogoliubov provided the foundation for non-linear mechanics, and the two established the Kyiv school of non-linear mechanics. Krylov’s basic works deal with the theory of mechanics and of dynamic systems.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]