Vladimir Rojansky

Who was Vladimir Rojansky?

Vladimir Borisovich Rojansky was an American physicist, author and educator. He was born in Bologoye, a small town outside St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a railroad construction engineer and one of his grandfathers was a general.

At the outbreak of the Russian Civil War he enlisted in the dragoons of the White Army. Within a month he was wounded in action and was hospitalized until the end of January. During the war his regiment retreated across Siberia to the Far Eastern Republic. There he was discharged as an officer in April 1921.

That year he crossed the Pacific to America. He was graduated from Whitman College in 1924, from the U. of Oregon, and from the University of Minnesota. His thesis was one of the first to employ the modern form of quantum mechanics. It was supervised by John van Vleck, who later won a Nobel Prize. In 1938 he published Introductory Quantum Mechanics, one of the earliest textbooks on the subject.

He taught at Washington University, Union College, and Harvey Mudd College.

From 1955 to 1965 he worked in the aerospace industry, first at the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation and later at the Space Technology Laboratories of TRW.