Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov

Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov
Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov
	Amateur astronomer
Known for	Inventor of the Maksutov telescope

Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov (

amateur astronomer. He is best known as the inventor of the Maksutov telescope

.

Biography

Dmitry Dmitriyevich Maksutov was born in 1896 in either Nikolayev

Russian Alaska, before it was purchased by the United States

in 1867.

Dmitri became interested in astronomy in early childhood, and constructed his first telescope (a 7.2 inch / 180 mm

University of Odessa

in the field of astronomical optics.

In 1930 Maksutov established the Laboratory of Astronomical Optics at the State Optical Institute of Leningrad and led it until 1952. This laboratory was one of the leading astronomical research groups in the USSR. While there he published Анаберрационные отражающие поверхности и системы и новые способы их испытания [Aberration-free reflective surfaces and systems and new methods of testing them] (1932), in which he analyzed aplanatic double mirror systems and introduced the compensating method, which he proposed as early as 1924. This became the main control method of mirror study along with the shadow method.

In 1944 he became a professor as a result of his paper, and from 1946 a Corresponding Member of the

USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1952 he worked in Pulkovo Observatory. Maksutov died in what was then Leningrad (a.k.a. Saint Petersburg) in 1964.^[2]

Inventions

Cassegrain version of the Maksutov telescope

Maksutov's most well known contribution in the field of optics was made in 1941, when he invented the

meniscus corrector shell"). He published the design in 1944 in a paper entitled "Новые катадиоптрические менисковые системы" [New catadioptric meniscus systems].^[3] This method was adopted not only by his own laboratory for many of the most important observatories in the Soviet Union, but also internationally. Several commercial telescope-making companies produce Maksutovs, including Celestron, Meade, and Questar

.

He created many

objective lenses, mirrors, and prisms of various sizes and purposes. He also created a photo-gastrograph (used for photographing the stomach), a needle-microscope

, shadow instruments for aerodynamic tubes, telescopic spectacles, and other instruments.