Although the concept of using a centrifuge to model engineering structures arose in the nineteenth century, the practice began only in the 1930s, in America and Russia. This paper provides details of the careers of four pioneers, primarily in the period prior to 1945 – Bucky, Davidenkov, Fedorov and Pokrovsky. There is some discussion on the effects of dissemination of Russian work on practice in the USA and elsewhere following the disclosure of Pokrovsky's work at the time of the 1973 International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering (ICSMFE) in Moscow. Physical modelling using centrifuges continues to be considered as one of the most efficient experimental methods for research into the behaviour of soil constructions.

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