Dmitry Lachinov

Dmitry Aleksandrovich Lachinov (1842 to 1902) was a Russian physicist, electrical engineer, inventor, meteorologist and climatologist. He studied at St. Petersburg University under Heinrich Lenz, Pafnuty Chebyshev and Feodor Petrushevsky, then spent two and a half years in Germany working with Gustav Kirchhoff, Robert Bunsen and Hermann Helmholtz. In a paper released in 1880 he became the first to point out that electricity could be transmitted over long distances and to propose how it might be done, eighteen months before Marcel Deprez published similar conclusions. His own inventions included a mercury pump, an economizer for electricity consumption, an electrical insulation tester, an optical dynamometer, a special photometer and an electrolyser, and in 1888 he devised a method of industrial synthesis of hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis. He also wrote the first Russian textbook of meteorology and climatology in 1889, and he was an Officer of the Order of the Legion of Honour.