Boris Bakhmeteff

Boris Alexandrovich Bakhmeteff (Russian: Борис Александрович Бахметев) (also spelled Bakhmetieff or Bakhmetev) (May 14, 1880 – July 21, 1951) was an engineer, businessman, professor of civil engineering at Columbia University and the only ambassador of the Russian Provisional Government to the United States.^[1] He was unrelated to his predecessor as ambassador, George Bakhmeteff.^[2]

Boris Bakhmeteff
Борис Бахметев
Bakhmeteff in 1918
Russian Ambassador to the United States
In office 1917
Preceded by	George Bakhmeteff
Succeeded by	Maxim Litvinov
Personal details
Born	(1880-05-14)May 14, 1880 Tbilisi, Russian Empire
Died	July 21, 1951(1951-07-21) (aged 71) Brookfield, Connecticut, U.S.
Political party	Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks)
Spouse(s)	Helen Bakhmeteff ​ ​ (m. 1905; died 1921)​ Marie C. Cole ​ (m. 1938)​

Biography

He was born on May 14, 1880, in Tbilisi, Georgia. He married Helen on July 22, 1905, in Kineshma, Russia.

His wife Helen died on July 24, 1921.^[3]

He became a member of the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906.^[4]

His position as ambassador was recognized by the United States government until his resignation in June 1922, when he established the Lion Match Company with other Russian immigrants.^[1][5] At his request the role of representative of Russia was transferred to his assistant Serge Ughet, financial attaché of the embassy, who held this position until United States recognition of the Soviet Union in 1933.

He introduced the concept of specific energy in hydraulics in his thesis and book Hydraulics of Open Channels in 1932.^[6]

He married Marie C. Cole in 1938 in Duval County, Florida.

In 1947 he received the Norman Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

He died on July 21, 1951, in Brookfield, Connecticut, of a heart attack.^[7]

Legacy

The Russian archives and a professorship of Russian at Columbia are named after him, as is a Harvard research fellowship in hydraulics.

Bakhmeteff's former residence in Washington, D.C.

Boris Bakhmeteff was also on the Board of Directors for the Tolstoy Foundation Center in Valley Cottage, New York.

Works

• Boris Aleksandrovich Bakhmateff, Hydraulics of Open Channels (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1932)
• Boris Aleksandrovich Bakhmateff, The Mechanics of Turbulent Flow (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1941)

Notes

1. Oleg Budnitskii (September 2003). "Boris Bakhmeteff's Intellectual Legacy in American and Russian Collections". Slavic & East European Information Resources. 4 (4): 5–12. doi:10.1300/J167v04n04_02. S2CID 143754464.Jared S. Ingersoll; Tanya Chebotarev (2003). Russian and East European books and manuscripts in the United States: Proceedings of a Conference in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture. New York: Haworth Information Press. pp. 5–12. ISBN 978-0-7890-2405-3.
2. "Plans Of Bakhmetieff. New Russian Envoy's Stay Is Only To Be Temporary" (PDF). The New York Times. June 8, 1917.
3. "Mme. Bakhmeteff, Wife of Russian Envoy Dies of Heart Disease in Owego". The New York Times. July 25, 1921. Retrieved August 1, 2009.
4. "Бахметьев Борис Александрович". hrono.ru. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
5. James E. Hassell (1991). Russian Refugees in France and the United States Between the World Wars. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-87169-817-9.
6. Kay, Melvyn (2008). Practical Hydraulics. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis. p. 150. ISBN 978-0-415-35115-7.
7. "Boris Bakhmeteff Of Columbia Dead. Professor of Civil Engineering Since 1931. Was Kerensky Regime's Envoy to U.S." The New York Times. July 22, 1951. Retrieved August 1, 2009. Dr. Boris A. Bakhmeteff, who was Russian Ambassador to the United States during the Kerensky regime, and since 1931 had been Professor of Civil Engineering at Columbia University, died yesterday morning of a heart attack at his home in Brookfield, Conn. He was 71 years old.

External links

• Works by or about Boris Bakhmeteff at the Internet Archive
• Boris Alexandrovich Bakhmeteff
• Hunter Rouse. "Highlights in the History of Hydraulics". Hydraulics Collection at the University of Iowa. Archived from the original on 2015-05-18.