Proskura, Heorhii

Proskura, Heorhii or Yurii [Проскура, Георгій (Юрій)], b 28 April 1876 in Smila, Cherkasy county, Kyiv gubernia, d 30 September 1958 in Kharkiv. Scientist in the fields of hydromechanics, marine construction, and aviation; full member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) from 1929. He graduated from the Moscow Higher Technical School (1901) and taught at the Kharkiv Technological Institute (from 1902), where he introduced one of the first courses on the theory of aviation. From 1945 he was director of the Laboratory of High-Speed Machines and Mechanisms at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (now the Institute of Mechanical Engineering Problems of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). He made important contributions in the areas of hydrodynamics, turbines, wind tunnels, and the modeling of fluid flow and was instrumental in the design and construction of major hydraulic works in the USSR, including the Moscow Canal. In 1974 a scientific prize in the area of energy research was established in his name by the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Proskura’s selected works were published in Kyiv in 1972, and a biography of him was published there in 1979.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]