Aleksey Krylov Aleksey Nikolaevich Krylov ( ; – October 26 , 1945 ) was a Russia n naval engineer , applied mathematician and memoirist . Biography . Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov was born on August 3 O . S . , 1863 to the family of an Army Artillery officer in a village Akhmatovo near town Alatyr of the Simbirsk Gubernia in Russia . Nikolay Krylov ' s parents were rather poor , but he received a free education as the son of an army veteran . Krylov entered a " Naval College " ( Морское училище ) in 1878 and finished with distinction in 1884 . There he did his first scientific work with Ivan de Collong about Deviation of magnetic compass es . The theory of magnetic and gyro - compasses fascinated him all his life ; he later published important works related to the dynamics of the magnetic compass and proposed the dromoscope , a device that would automatically calculate the deviation of a compass . He also was a pioneer of the gyrocompass , being the first to create a full theory of it . After spending several years at the " Main Hydrographic Administration " and at a shipbuilding plant ( " French - Russian shipbuilding company " ) , in 1888 he continued his study in the Naval Academy of Saint Petersburg . He was a talented and promising student and after graduating ahead - of - schedule from the Academy in 1890 , stayed on as mathematics and ship - theory lecturer . Fame came to him in the 1890s , when his pioneering " Theory of oscillating motions of the ship " , significantly extending William Froude ' s rolling theory , became internationally known . This was the first comprehensive theoretical study in the field . In 1898 Krylov received a Gold Medal from the Royal Institution of Naval Architects , the first time the prize was awarded to a foreigner . He also created a theory of damping of ship rolling and pitching , and was the first to propose gyroscopic damping which now is the most common way of damping the roll . After 1900 Krylov actively collaborated with Stepan Makarov , admiral and maritime scientist , working on the ship floodability problem . The results of this work soon became classic and are used today worldwide . Years later , Krylov wrote about of the early ideas of Makarov to fight the heel of a sinking ship by flooding its undamaged compartments : " This appeared to be such a great nonsense [ to the naval officials ] that it took 35 years … to convince [ them ] that the ideas of the 22 - year - old Makarov are of great practical value " . Krylov was well known for his sharp tongue and quick wits . His put downs to government and Duma officials were legendary . As a capable naval consultant , he claimed that his advice saved the government more than the cost of a dreadnaught . In 1917 he became CEO of " Russian society for shipbuilding and trade " ( Русское общество пароходостроительства и торговли ) . After the October Revolution he transferred all his ships to Soviet government and continued to work for the Russian Navy . In 1921 he went to London to re - establish scientific contacts , working there as a representative of Soviet government . In 1927 he returned to the Soviet Union . Krylov wrote about 300 papers and books . They span a wide range of topics , including shipbuilding , magnetism , artillery , mathematics , astronomy , and geodesy . His floodability tables have been used worldwide . Of note are his works in hydrodynamics including theory of ships moving in shallow water ( he was the first to explain and calculate the significant increase of hydrodynamic resistance in shallow water ) and the theory of soliton s . In 1904 he built the first machine in Russia for integrating Ordinary differential equation s . In 1931 he published a paper on what is now called the Krylov subspace and Krylov subspace methods . The paper deals with eigenvalue problems , namely , with computation of the characteristic polynomial coefficients of a given matrix . Krylov was concerned with efficient computations and , as a computational scientist , he counts the work as a number of separate numerical multiplications ; something not very typical for a 1931 mathematical paper . Krylov begins with a careful comparison of the existing methods that include the worst - case - scenario estimate of the computational work in the Jacobi method . Later , he presents his own method which is superior to the known methods of that time and is still widely used . Krylov also published the first Russian translation of Isaac Newton , " Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica " ( 1915 ) . Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov died in Leningrad ( i . e . Saint Petersburg ) on October 26 , 1945 , shortly after the end of the World War II . He is buried in the Volkovo Cemetery , not far from the physiologist Ivan Pavlov and the chemist Dmitri Mendeleev . He was awarded Stalin Prize ( 1941 ) , three Orders of Lenin , Hero of Socialist Labor ( 1943 ) , and was an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences ( after 1916 ) . The crater Krylov on the Moon is named after him . In one of his autobiographical papers , Krylov describes his activity as ' shipbuilding , i . e . application of Mathematics to various Maritime problems . ' Family . Krylov married his second cousin Elisaveta Dmitrievna Dranitsyna . His daughter Anna married famous physicist Pyotr Kapitsa , discoverer of superfluidity and Nobel Prize in Physics winner . Their children included geographer Andrey Kapitsa , ( 1931 – 2011 ) , who discovered Lake Vostok , the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica 4 , 000 meters below the continent ' s ice cap , and Sergey Kapitsa ( 1928 - 2012 ) , physicist and demographer , host of the popular and long - running Russian scientific TV show , " Evident , but Incredible " . Alexey Krylov was very close to his son - in - law .