Dmitri Dmitrievich Maksutov

Dmitri Dmitrievich Maksutov

Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov (Russian: Дми́трий Дми́триевич Максу́тов) (23 April [O.S. 11 April] 1896 – 12 August 1964) was a Russian / Soviet optical engineer and amateur astronomer. He is best known as the inventor of the Maksutov telescope.

Dmitry Dmitriyevich Maksutov was born in 1896 in either Nikolayev or the port city of Odessa, Russian Empire. His father, a naval officer serving with the Black Sea Fleet, came from a family with a long and distinguished naval tradition. His great-grandfather, Peter Ivanovich Maksutov, was given the title of prince, thereby raising the family to hereditary nobility as a reward for bravery in combat. His grandfather, Dmitri Petrovich Maksutov, was the last Russian governor of Russian-American 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/180mm reflector) when he was twelve years old. Later he read publications by the famous Russian optician Alexander Andreevich Chikin (1865–1924), who became his teacher. He constructed a much better 10-inch (210mm) reflector and began serious astronomical observation. At 15 years of age he had already been accepted as a member of the Russian Astronomical Society. Three years later he graduated from the Military Nikolayev Engineering Institute in what was then Petrograd (aka Saint Petersburg, Russia), now Military engineering-technical university. Between 1921 and 1930 he worked at the Physics Institute of the University of Odessa in the field of astronomical optics.

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