Boris Bakhmeteff


Boris Alexandrovich Bakhmeteff was an engineer, businessman, professor of civil engineering at Columbia University and the only ambassador of the Russian Provisional Government to the United States. He was unrelated to his predecessor as ambassador, George Bakhmeteff.

Biography

He was born on May 14, 1880 in Tbilisi, Georgia. He married Helen on July 22, 1905, in Kineshma, Russia.
His wife Helen died in 1921.
His position as ambassador was recognized by the United States government until his resignation in June 1922, when he established the Lion Match Company with other Russian immigrants.
He introduced the concept of specific energy in hydraulics in his thesis and book Hydraulics of Open Channels in 1932.
He married Marie C. Cole in 1938 in Duval County, Florida.
In 1947 he received the Norman Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
He died on July 21, 1951, in Brookfield, Connecticut, of a heart attack.

Legacy

The Russian archives and a professorship of Russian at Columbia are named after him, as is a Harvard research fellowship in hydraulics.
Boris Bakhmeteff was also on the Board of Directors for the Tolstoy Foundation Center in Valley Cottage, New York.

Works