Файл: Задания к ком. тестированию 1сем. 1 курс.docx

In 1871 the Kovalevskys went to Berlin. During four years in Berlin Sophia wrote three dissertations. When three scientific masterpieces by Kovalevskaya appeared in 1874, Hettingen University awarded her the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

On her return to Russia she vainly tried to get a post at St Petersburg University. Despite the efforts of Mendeleyev, Butlerov and Chebyshev, Sophia Kovalevskaya, an outstanding scientist already, didn’t get any position at the University. The tsarist government didn’t want to have women-professors. Again S. Kovalevskaya returned to Berlin where she completed her work on the refraction of light in crystals.

In 1883 she accepted the offer of Stockholm University and was elected professor of mechanics and held this post until her death in 1891.

In 1888 she won the highest prize which was offered by the Paris Academy of Sciences for the solution of complicated problem: to perfect the theory of movement of a solid body about an immovable point. Her solution made a valuable addition to the result submitted by Euler and Lagrange. In 1889 Kovalevskaya was awarded another prize, this time by the Swedish Academy of Sciences. In her numerous scientific works Kovalevskaya solved the problems which many scientists couldn’t solve during many years.

Along with her scientific and pedagogical work she carried out literary work took part in editing the journal “Acta Mathematica”, and translated Chebyshev’s works into French. For literary work she was elected member of the Literary Club in Stockholm.

When she became a world-famous scientist Kovalevskaya won recognition in her own country. In 1889 she was elected a Corresponding-member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Unfortunately, Sophia Kovalevskaya died at the age of 41 on February 10, 1891, just as she had attained the height of her fame.

Words to be learnt

Text 4 GRAVITATION

Gravitation is a very important force in the universe. Every object has gravitational pull which is like magnetism. But, unlike magnetism, gravitation is not only in iron and steel. It is in every object large or small; but large objects, such as earth, have a stronger pull than small ones.

Isaac Newton, the great scientist of the seventeenth century, first studied gravitation. When he was a boy, he often saw how apples fell to the ground. He wondered why they fell towards the earth and why they did not fly up into the sky.

According to ¹ the law which he later produced everything in the universe attracts everything else towards itself. The sun attracts the earth and the earth attracts the sun. The earth attracts the moon and the moon attracts the sun. Although the bigger object has the stronger attraction, all objects, in fact ² have some attraction too but we do not notice the gravitational pull of a book because the pull of the earth is very much greater.

Why does the earth always move round the sun, and not fly off into cold space? The sun’s gravitation gives the answer. The earth always tries to move away in a straight line, but the sun always pulls it back. So it continues on its journey round and round the sun.

The sun is one of then stars in the galaxy, in which there are about 100 000 million stars. It is not in the middle of the galaxy, but rather ³ near one edge.

There are millions of galaxies in the universe and so there are thousands of millions of millions of suns. Many astronomers believe that some of these suns have planets as our sun does.

Gravitation is the force which holds all the atoms of a star together. It holds the sun together and holds the atoms of the earth together. It holds us on the earth.

Einstein produced a new law of gravitation. Its main results are the same as the results of Newton’s law; but in very small and fine matters Einstein’s law gives different results. One of these is that gravitation bends light a little; but according to Newton’s law gravitation has very little effect on light. Einstein showed this fact by means of mathematics and not by experiment. And astronomers later proved by experiments that Einstein was right.

Примечания:

1 according to – в соответствии с

2 in fact – на самом деле, фактически

3 but rather – а скорее