Boris Hessen

Boris Mikhailovich Hessen (Russian: Бори́с Миха́йлович Ге́ссен), also Gessen (16 August 1893, Elisavetgrad – 20 December 1936, Moscow),[1] was a Soviet physicist, philosopher and historian of science.

Boris Hessen was born to a Jewish family in Elisavetgrad, in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine).

Bukharin, Hessen delivered the paper "The Socio-Economic Roots of Newton's Principia" at the Second International Congress of the History of Science in London.

[3][4] Hessen asserted that Isaac Newton's most famous work was created to cater to the goals and desires of 17th century industry and economy.

Hessen asserted that Newton's work was inspired by his economic status and context, that the Principia was the solution of technical problems of the bourgeoisie.

However, his assertion that a connection existed between the growth of knowledge and the art of war, and that ballistics played a central part of physics and Newton's world, was viewed with keen interest.

He was secretly tried for terrorism by a military tribunal together with his gymnasium school teacher Arkadij O. Apirin, who had been arrested two months earlier.