Boris Borisovich Golitsyn (2.03.1862 —17.05.1916) was a Russian physicist, the founder of seismology in Russia and a member of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1898). He was born in St Petersburg. He graduated from the Naval Academy in St Petersburg (1886) and from the University of Strasbourg (1890). He taught at higher educational institutions in St Petersburg and at the same time was head of the physics cabinet of the Academy of Sciences (from 1894). From 1913 he was director of the Main Physical Observatory.
His main work was in meteorology and seismology, and it was thanks to Golitsyn that the latter became an exact scientific discipline. He solved the problem of determining the focus of an earthquake from the data of a single seismic station, constructed the first electrodynamic seismograph and developed its theory, created many other seismic instruments, and settled the question of the speed of propagation of seismic waves at various depths within the Earth. All the Russian seismic stations and most of the foreign ones were equipped with Golitsyn's seismographs.
His research also concerned optics, molecular physics and spectroscopy. He was the first to introduce (1893) the concept of the temperature of thermal radiation, verified the Doppler effect for light experimentally, studied the critical state of matter and carried out a number of spectroscopic investigations.
He was president of the International Seismological Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society (1916) and an honorary member of many scientific societies.