Dr. Alexander Ivanovitch Kossiakoff
(1914 - 2005)
Compiled by Brooke Davies
"Cousin Kossy" was not a Davies descendant, but he was a member of our family for 66 years! His wife Arabelle was the daughter of Seabury Davies, and she was my father's first cousin. I did not see the Kossiakoffs very often, but Arabelle gave me my first copy of "Old Nick" in 1995, and that is how I became connected with Bob Chope and began developing this web site. I saw Kossy and Arabelle again in 1998 (see the "Reunion Recollections and Reflections") and once more in 2001 (see the "Davies Family Events").
Cousin Kossy was a brilliant scientist, adminstrator and educator. He was born in Czarist Russia in 1914, but his family escaped to China after the revolution, and they arrived in the United States in 1923. He graduated from Caltech, earned a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Johns Hopkins in only two years, studied with Linus Pauling, and became a true "rocket scientist" at the JHU Applied Physics Lab. His remarkable life and 60-year career at APL are described on numerous Internet sites. Here are few of them (these links will open new windows):
Alexander Kossiakoff: His Life and Career, Part 1
Part 2
Obituaries:
The Washington Post
The New York Times
The Johns Hopkins University newspaper