Fedorov was born in the Russian city of Orenburg. His father was a topographical engineer. The family later moved to Saint Petersburg. From the age of fifteen, he was deeply interested in the theory of polytopes, which later became his main research interest. He was a distinguished graduate of the Gorny Institute, which he joined at the age of26. He was elected the first Director of the Institute in 1905.[4]
He developed the Fedorov stage for polarizing microscopes, a tool for crystallography which allows a mineral specimen to be studied under precise angles of tilt and rotation, providing an analysis of crystal structure.[8]
His first book, Basics of Polytopes, was finished in 1879 and published in 1885. It offers a classification of polytopes and derives Fedorov polytopes, congruent polytopes that can completely fill space.
He wrote the classic The Symmetry of Regular Systems of Figures in 1891,[9] which contained the first cataloging of the 230 space groups. The same year the equivalent results were presented by German mathematician Schönflies. Fedorov and Schönflies had been intensively discussing the subject during their work, so the results can be somehow considered as joint ones, though Schönflies noted Fedorov's priority for some major ideas.
He published his classic work The Theodolite Method in Mineralogy and Petrography in 1893.[10]
In 1906 he published Perfektsionizm (Perfectionism), a work he had started in the late 1870s. From a materialistic starting point he argued that natural conditions are themselves conditions of eternal change. He attacked authors claim that there is stability and equilibrium in nature. Contrariwise he claimed that evolution is the quality of living creatures rather than a tendency toward a "higher order" of stability, and equilibrium of organisms. He criticised Herbert Spencer's views arguing that such views when applied to the evolution of natural history focus attention on the least changeable. However, he argued that such views systematically failed to take into account the fact that equilibrium is attained only at the moment of death: for a living creature, changing forms are constantly developing. Thus, Fyodorov criticised the notion that the constant and the stable are the supreme mission of life. Rather he claimed that life never finally achieves anything but always strives to achieve. For him this is where the true philosophy of nature is to be found.[11]
Tsarstvo kristallov (Crystal Kingdom) was first published posthumously in 1920 and featured much of the work carried out by Fyodorov and his colleagues. during the previous of forty years. Here he noted that sciences which have been fully developed not only satisfy the spiritual needs of part of mankind but also provide great power to direct the active forces of nature for man’s use.[11]
Evgraf Fjodorow Strasse
There is a street named after him on the site of the international X-ray laser research facility European XFEL in Schenefeld near Hamburg.
I. I. Shafranovskii and N. V. Belov, "In Memoriam: E. S. Fedorov 1853–1919," in P. P. Ewald, ed., Fifty Years of X-ray Diffraction (Utrecht, Nederland: International Union of Crystallography, 1962), pages 341–350. PDF online
R.V. Galiulin (November 2003) "To the 150th anniversary of the birth of Evgraf Stepanovich Federov (1853–1919): Irregularities in the fate of the theory of regularity," Crystallography Reports, 48 (6): 899–913. PDF online
A. Meniailov, "Fyodorov (or Fedorov), Evgraf Stepanovich" in Charles C. Gillispie, editor in chief, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972), vol. 5, pp. 210–214.
Fedorov, E.S. (1885). "Начала ученія о фигурахъ"[Elements of the theory of figures]. Записки Императорского С.-Петербургского Минералогического Общества (Zapiski Imperatorskova Sankt-Petersburgskova Mineralogicheskova Obshchestva, Proceedings of the Imperial St. Petersburg Mineralogical Society). 2nd series (in Russian). 21: 1–279.
Fedorow, F. von (1892). "Zusammenstellung der kirstallographischen Resultate des Herrn Schoenflies und der meinigen"[Compilation of the crystallographic results of Mr. Schoenflies and mine]. Zeitschrift für Krystallographie und Mineralogie (in German). 20: 25–75.; see footnote on p. 26. From p. 26: "Diesem Gegenstande ist der vierte Abschnitt meiner "Elemente der Lehre von den Figuren" gewidmet, welcher schon 1881 fertig war, und in demselben Jahre habe ich davon schon Anwendung gemacht, und zwar darauf eine neue Theorie der Krytallstructur basirt (Verhandl. d. k. mineral. Ges. 17, 381 u. 18, 281)." (The fourth part of my "Elements of the Theory of Figures", which was already finished in 1881, is devoted to this subject, and in the same year, I had already made use of it, and indeed [I had] based a new theory of crystal structure on it (Proceedings of the Imperial St. Petersburg Mineralogical Society, 17, p. 381 and 18, p. 281).)
Fedorov, E.S. (1891). "Симметрія на плоскости"[Simmetriya na ploskosti, Symmetry in the plane]. Записки Императорского С.-Петербургского Минералогического Общества (Zapiski Imperatorskova Sankt-Petersburgskova Mineralogicheskova Obshchestva, Proceedings of the Imperial St. Petersburg Mineralogical Society). 2nd series (in Russian). 28: 345–390.
George Pólya (1924) "Über die Analogie der Kristallsymmetrie in der Ebene" (On the analog of crystal symmetry in the plane), Zeitschrift für Kristallographie, 60: 278–282.
E. S. Fedorov (1891) "Симметрія правильныхъ системъ фигуръ" (Simmetriya pravil'nykh sistem figur, The symmetry of regular systems of figures), Записки Императорского С.-Петербургского Минералогического Общества (Zapiski Imperatorskova Sankt Petersburgskova Mineralogicheskova Obshchestva, Proceedings of the Imperial St. Petersburg Mineralogical Society), series 2, 28: 1–146. (in Russian) English translation: David and Katherine Harker (trans.), Symmetry of Crystals, American Crystallographic Association Monograph No. 7 [Buffalo, N.Y.: American Crystallographic Association, 1971], pages 50–131.
