By 160-th anniversary from birthday of Professor Emeritus of geodesy, honorary doctor of geodesy and astronomy of Kazan University, Lieutenant General of the Russian army Vasily Vasilyevich Vitkowski. V. Vitkowski was born on 1 Sep 1856. In 1975 he Graduated from Military engineering school, in 1885 he graduated from the geodetic division of the Academy of the General Staff. Shortly after graduating from the Academy and Pulkovo practices V. Vitkowski was assigned to shoot the North-West of the Empire, where 5 years acquired considerable practical experience useful to him in subsequent scientific and pedagogical activities in the Military-topographic College (1889–1907) and the Military-topographic school (1918–1923), in the geodesic Department of the Military Academy (1897–1918) in the geodesic Department of the Military engineering Academy (1919–1924),in addition, Vladimir Vitkowski taught in civilian institutions of higher education in Electrotechnical Institute (1893–1901), at the Polytechnic Institute (1907–1908) and in the Women’s pedagogical Institute (1914–1915), compiling printed works. Saw the light of the following publications: 1980 translation of «Geodesy» by A. Clark, 1898 «Practical Geodesy», 2nd edition, 1911, 1904, «Topography», 2nd edition in 1915, 3rd edition (posthumous) in 1924, in 1907, «Cartography», awarded in 1909 award in the name Litke. Assessing the activity of V. V. Vitkovskiy, the authors acknowledged its occurrence in the geodetic, topographic and cartographic world and that the bright image of V. V. Vitkovskiy not changed Home during the period of hard times the beginning of the twentieth century, to be a good example for the new generations of workers surveying a specialty.