by Boris FOMKIN, Cand. Sc. (Tech.), academic secretary, Zhukovsky and Gagarin Air Force Academy, Moscow, Russia "Man has no wings. But fly he shall by relying on the force of his reason, not on the force of his muscles..." This is what Nikolai Zhukovsky, the "father of Russian aviation", wrote in 1890. The originator of present-day hydro- and aeromechanics, a brilliant experimentalist and teacher, all in one, he was elected corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1894. Emblem of the Zhukovsky and Gagarin Air Force Academy. стр. 63 All the way back in 1918 Nikolai Zhukovsky made a report at the All-Russia Aviation Congress in which he validated the necessity and possibility of creating the world's best aviation in this country. Topnotch flyers and engineers were needed for that. Two years after, Zhukovsky set up the first higher school of aviators--the Institute of Red Air Force Engineers reorganized in 1922 into an academy named after its founder and first head. The next year, in 1923, it moved into the Petrovsky (Petrine) palace* in Moscow's northwest next to a large airfield (subsequently known as the Central Airdrome), an excellent training ground for would-be air pilots. In 1998 the Zhukovsky Academy became an occupant of a complex of buildings with the main edifice on Planetnaya Street. In keeping with the instructions of the federal government, in 2009 this academy incorporated a number of air force schools in other cities (St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl, Krasnodar, Chelyabinsk, Yeisk and Syzran) as affiliates. * This palace was put up in 1776 to 1780 in what is now Leningrad Highway. A model of Russian Neo-Gothic Architecture.--Ed. This country's largest--and the world's oldest-school of aeronautics celebrated its 90th birth jubilee in 2010. It has produced a galaxy of great scientists and aviators, such as the mathematicians losif Vorovich and Vladimir Pugachev; Nikolai Bruevich, expert in the sc ... Читать далее