Aleksandr Yakovlevich Orlov (6 April 1880, in Smolensk – 28 January 1954, in Kiev) was an astronomer and pioneer of geodynamics.
Orlov studied at Saint Petersburg University, graduating with distinction in 1902. He subsequently developed his scientific background through study at the University of Paris, at the University of Lund under Carl Charlier then at the University of Göttingen under with Johann Emil Wiechert.
In 1927, Orlov was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; in 1934-38 he was a professor of astronomy at the P. K. Sternberg Astronomical Institute in Moscow. From 1938 to 1951, he again headed the Poltava Observatory, and in 1939 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.He contributed the essay “Astronomic Utopias” to the 1928 book Life and Technology of the Future in which he discussed the possibility of settling on Mars and the Moon.
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