LELYAVSKY N S

RUSSIA (see also List of Individuals)

\

.. 1853 Kaluga Province/RU - 18.2.1905 Kiev/RU

\

Nicholas S. Lelyavsky graduated from the Imperial Engineering Institute of Saint Petersburg in 1875 to start his career with the study of the hydraulic regime of River Pripet, a tributary of Dniepr River. Three years later he was involved in the regulation of the river at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. As a chief engineer from 1886, Lelyavsky then proceeded to the improvement of River Dniepr for the following six years and in 1898 was appointed head of the communication department in Kiev.

\

Lelyavsky's work of life involved the improvement of the Dniepr River. The 2,200 km long river has its sources in the Valday Hills in North Russia, then flows through Belarus and the Ukraine and runs into the Black Sea. Today, about 800 km of the Dniepr represent a chain of consecutive reservoirs. Lelyavsky designed around 1900 a number of works that greatly facilitated the economic river use and contributed to the reduction of damages following floods of water and ice in spring. He designed the river harbors of Jekaterinoslav, today's Dnieprospetrovsk in Ukraine, and Alexandrovsk. Besides, he investigated river flow and designed instrumentation to observe the local flow direction. A paper was presented during the 1894 International Navigation Congress and considered interesting enough for a wider usage. Like mainly French river engineers, Lelyavsky investigated also the morphology of rivers. The results were presented during the National Russian Exhibition at Nijni-Novgorod in 1896, for which the author was awarded a Gold medal. His last work relating to river dredging as a means to improve river navigation was posthumously published during the 10th PIANC Congress held in Milan. It also presents an optical method for determining the river flow direction along a vertical. One of the sons of Lelyavsky was Serge Leliavsky (1891-1963), the famous Russian river engineer having mainly worked in Egypt and later having moved to the United Kingdom.

\

_{Hoerschelmann, E. de (1905). M. Nicolas de Lelyavski. 10th International Navigation Congress Milan 1(6): 1-4. P}

_{Lelyavsky, N.S. de (1893). On river currents and channel formation. Trudy vtorogo s'iezda inzhereov gidrotekhnikov: 3-81 (in Russian).}

_{Lelyavsky, N.S. de (1894). Des courants fluviaux et de la formation du lit fluvial. 6 Congrès International de Navigation Intérieure La Haye Q6: 1-46.}

_{Lelyavsky, N.S. de (1904). Russian studies of river flow. Engineering News 52(9): 183-186. Lelyavsky, N.S. de (1905). Résultats obtenus par le dragage sur les seuils des rivières. 10 International Navigation Congress Milan 1(6): 5-67.}