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army. Her precocious interest in mathematics
was reportedly sparked by her father's school
notes on differential and integral equations
that were used as temporary wallpaper in the
children's rooms of the family estate. Neverthe-
less, at age 17 she was studying with a mathe-
matics professor from the St. Petersburg Naval
Academy. A marriage of convenience in 1868—
common to Russian women of her time seeking
emancipation—to Vladimir Kovalevsky, a pale-
ontologist, brought her to Germany. Unable to
attend university lectures, she took private
courses at Heidelberg and Berlin, where she stud-
ied with Weierstrass for four years. In 1874,
remarkable research papers on partial differential
equations, integrals, and Saturn's rings earned
her a doctorate in absentia from the University of
Gottingen. Unable to find a teaching position in
Europe, Kovalevskaia returned to Russia, where
her husband was expecting a lectureship at
Moscow University. The position never material-
ized and Kovalevsky committed suicide in 1883
after his name came up in connection with shady
business deals. In 1884 Kovalevskaia's mentor,
Weierstrass, helped arrange a mathematics lec-
tureship at the University of Stockholm; in 1889,
she was promoted to the rank of professor. While
at Stockholm, she carried out important research
and wrote
On the Rotation of a Solid Body About a
Fixed Point
(1888), which earned her the presti-
gious Prix Bordin from the French Academy of
Sciences. She also served as editor of the journal
Acta Mathematica.
Further research on this subject
won her a prize from the Swedish Academy of
Sciences, and in 1889 she was elected a corre-
sponding member of the Russian
ACADEMY OF
SCIENCES
. At the height of her career, Kovalev-
skaia died in Stockholm on February 10, 1891,
from influenza complicated by pneumonia.
Kovalevskaia was also an accomplished writer. In
Recollections of Childhood
she describes the early life
of a woman of the intelligentsia. A fictionalized
version appeared as
The Sisters Rajevsky.
Other
novels such as
Vera Vorontsov, The University Lec-
turer,
and a drama,
The Struggle for Happiness,
were
highly regarded.
Kozlov, Petr Kuzmich
(1863-1935)
explorer
The leader of the 1907-9 expedition that discov-
ered the remains of the ancient city of Khara-
Khoto in the Gobi Desert, Kozlov was born in
Smolensk province, the son of a herdsman.
After graduating from military school he took
part in the Central Asian expeditions of
PRZHE
-
VALSKY
, Pevtsov, and Roborovskii. From 1899 to
1901, he directed his first Mongolian-Tibetan
expedition, which made important contribu-
tions to the knowledge of the ethnography, cli-
mate, vegetation, and geology of eastern Tibet.
The results of this expedition were published in
eight volumes,
Mongolia and Kam
(
Mongolia i
Kam
) (1905-8). His most important discovery
would come with the expedition he led to Mon-
golia and Szechuan, China, in 1907-9. Amid the
sands of the Gobi Desert his team uncovered the
ancient city of Khara-Khoto, along with materi-
als that revealed much about the culture of the
Tanguts, including over 2,000 volumes of books
written in Tangut, Chinese, and other lan-
guages. The published results of this expedition
did not appear until 1923, when Kozlov pub-
lished
Mongolia and Amdo and the Dead City of
Khara-Khoto
(
Mongoliia i Amdo i mertvyi gorod
Khara-Khoto
). He undertook his last major expe-
dition to Mongolia and Tibet between 1923 and
1926. This time in the mountains of Khentei, his
team uncovered the burial mound of Noin-Ula,
belonging to the Hunnic aristocracy and dating
back to the Christian era.
Kronstadt Rebellion (
1921)
An uprising of sailors in March 1921 at the Kron-
stadt naval base that shook the foundations of
the Soviet state and convinced
LENIN
and the
COMMUNIST PARTY
of the need to move toward a
more moderate economic policy, later known as
the New Economic Policy (NEP). Located on the
island of Kotlin in the Gulf of Finland, about 14
miles west of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), which
commanded the approach to the city, the naval
base grew around the town of Krontstadt,
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