Nikolai Alekseevich Rynin (1877–1942) was our University’s graduate of 1901, professor, civil engineer, specialist in railway operation, descriptive geometry, aerodynamics, aviation theory, one of the first pilots of aerostats and airplanes in Russia, founder of aerodynamic laboratories at our Institute, pioneer of space flight theory (along with K.E. Tsiolkovsky and F.A. Zander), founder and dean of the country’s first faculty of air transport, that has been working from 1920 to 1930. In 1930, on the basis of this faculty, the Leningrad Institute of Civil Air Fleet Engineers was created; today its successor is the Saint Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation.

Yaroslava Vatulina, a second-year student of the Faculty of Arts of the St. Petersburg University of the Humanities and Social Sciences, became interested in the biography and achievements of our outstanding graduate. She is a screenwriter and operator of a film dedicated to N.A. Rynin, which she creates as her thesis project.

The film is being shot at several places in St. Petersburg that are significant in the life of N.A. Rynin, primarily at our University, where he rose from an adjunct professor (initial teaching position in pre-revolutionary Russia) to a doctor of sciences, professor, dean of the faculty of air transport.

On March 18, professor of the departments «Road Construction of Transport Systems» and «History, Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology», PhD Igor Kiselev spoke about the works of Nikolai Rynin in an interview for the film, shot in the Assembly and Drawing halls of PGUPS.

In his speech, Igor Kiselev pointed out that it is Nikolai Alekseevich who is rightfully considered the founder of the training of civil aviation specialists in our country. In the times when aviation was still mostly viewed as a sports hobby, and by a few military men — as a future element of weapons, Nikolai Rynin saw the demand and enormous potential for organizing air passenger transportation, the need to begin, along with the training of aircraft designers, that of pilots, aircraft technicians, and civil aviation organizers. Today’s successes of passenger aviation, millions of passengers transported annually by the air fleet, contain a piece of effort and fulfillment of vision of N.A. Rynin.

Photos from the Archives of Russian Academy of Sciences
(http://arran.ru/?q=ru/exposition1_1)