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Zinovy Slonimski
Slonimski Zinovy Yakovlevich
(31.03.1810 – 15.05.1904)
Mathematician, inventor, and popularizer of scientific knowledge
Zinovy Slonimski was born in Bialystok (now in Poland). He had religious education, learnt mathematics and astronomy by himself. Slonimski lived and worked in Zabludow, Warsaw and Tomaszow. From 1863 to early 1870s he was an inspector of Ravin School in Zhitomir (Ukraine). In 1840 he invented and then in 1845 patented a “gear for addition and subtraction”, one of the simplest mechanical adding machines. He proved a new theorem on the properties of multiple numbers (Slonimski’s theorem); on basis of it in 1843 Slonimski invented and built the first arithmetical machine of the discrete calculation that allowed multiplying and dividing whole numbers, and extracting quadratic roots. The theorem was shown in the Academies of Sciences in Berlin and St. Petersburg, in 1845 it was awarded the Demidov Prize. In 1849 he received a patent for improvement of the steam engine, where steam power made a direct rotary motion. Almost 20 years before the American inventor T. A. Edison, in 1858 Slonimski proposed and published the method of simultaneous transmission of two pairs of telegrams by one wire in opposite directions (quadruplex connection). Slonimski is an author of the textbook of mathematics “Basis of Wisdom” (1834) which was published in Hebrew, the popular scientific essay on astronomy “Star with a Tail” (1835), the manual “Guide to Astronomy” (1838) which contains the results of his own astronomical research, the books “About Immortality of Soul” (1852), “Fundamentals of the Jewish Calendar” (1852), “Foundations of Science of Changes” (1865), “Geometry” (1866). In 1858 to the 90th anniversary of Alexander von Humboldt he published in Berlin a book dedicated to his life and works. Zinovy Slonimski was a founder (1861), a lifelong editor and a principal author of the weekly (and then daily) popular science newspaper “Dawn”, published in Hebrew in Warsaw and Berlin. He died and was buried in Warsaw.
Works:
1. Описание нового числительного инструмента, изобретенного З. Слонимским. СПб., 1845.
2. Описание способа передачи двух различных депеш и в то же самое время приема двух других депеш по одному и тому же проводнику. СПб., 1859.
3. Zur Freiheit bestimmt. Alexander von Humboldt – eine hebraische Lebensbeschreibung. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1997.
Literature:
1. Радовский М. И. Изобретатель «арифметической машины» З. Я. Слонимский // Вестник АН СССР. 1952, №10. С. 115–120.
2. Беспамятных Н. Д. Математическое образование в Белоруссии. Исторический очерк. Минск, 1975.
3. Апокин И. А., Майстров Л. Е. История вычислительной техники. М.: Наука, 1990.
© National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 2011
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