Boris Hessen

Boris Mikhailovich Hessen (Russian: Бори́с Миха́йлович Ге́ссен), also Gessen (August 16, 1893, Elisavetgrad – December 20, 1936, Moscow), was a Soviet physicist, philosopher and historian of science. He is most famous for his paper on Newton's Principia which became foundational in historiography of science.

Boris Hessen was born to a Jewish family in Elisavetgrad, Russia (now Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine). He studied physics and natural sciences at the University of Edinburgh (1913—1914) together with his gymnasium school friend Igor Tamm. He then went to study at the St. Petersburg University (1914—1917). He joined the Red Army in the Russian Civil War, and became a communist and a member of the Revolutionary Military Council (1919—1921). He also continued his physics studies at various places eventually graduating from the Red Professor's Institute in Moscow in 1928. After working in the institute for two more years, he became a physics professor and the chair of the physics department at the Moscow State University in 1931. In 1933 he was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.