First Director of NIKIET
Academician
Nikolay A. Dollezhal
(27.10.1899 - 20.11. 2000)
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The outstanding scientist and designer Nikolay Dollezhal will remain in the history of reactor engineering as the father of many unique reactor systems. He was Chief Designer of the first Soviet production reactors that were the pivot of the national nuclear shield. The world's first nuclear power plant, nuclear power facility for the first Soviet nuclear submarine, steam superheating reactors, nuclear rocket engines, large power pressure-tube graphite reactors, diverse research reactors make an incomplete list of facilities created by talented designer Nikolay Dollezhal and his teams. Designer Dollezhal was never afraid of plunging into unknown.
Nikolay Dollezhal was born on October 27, 1899, to the family of an engineer in the village of Omelnik in Ukraine. On finishing school in the town of Podolsk in 1917, he entered mechanical faculty of Moscow Higher Technical School, from which he graduated in 1923 with mechanical engineer diploma.
Early in his carrier, Dollezhal was developing heat components for factories and plants that were being restored at that time. Later he worked for chemical industry. In 1930s, Dollezhal worked as technical director of Leningrad Institute of Nitrogen Engineering, as chief engineer of a chemical production plant in Kiev, and then took various management posts in Commissariat (ministry) of Heavy Industry. When World War II broke in Russia, Nikolay Dollezhal was sent to Sverdlovsk to act as chief engineer of Uralchimmash (chemical engineering) plant being built there.
In 1942, a Research and Development Institute of Chemical Engineering (RDICM) was set up in Moscow and Dollezhal was appointed to the position of its Director and Chief Scientist. It was in this Institute that Nikolay Dollezhal finally implemented his long-harboured idea of combining scientific and engineering activities in one institute provided with advanced experimental, scientific and production capabilities. It was probably due to successful implementation of this idea, excellent knowledge and formidable expertise of RDICM specialists who proved to be able to tackle most challenging engineering tasks working under high pressure that Nikolay Dollezhal and his staff were enlisted in 1946 to work on nuclear weapons projects.
Following the decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, a Research and Development Institute of Power Engineering (NII-8, later NIKIET) was set up in 1952, and Dollezhal became its Director and Chief Scientist. The Institute was to continue development of production and power reactors, started in RDICM, and to design a nuclear power facility for the first Soviet nuclear submarine. Nikolay Dollezhal held this position for 34 years.
He was always keen on research and tuition. Back in 1930s he helped establish a chemical engineering faculty in Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, became its head and personally delivered a course in high-pressure compressors. In 1944, he began delivering this course in his Alma Mater - Moscow Higher Technical School (known as Bauman Institute). Thinking of the future of reactor engineering, he set up in 1961 and then headed for nearly 25 years the faculty of Power Machines and Facilities in Bauman Institute, which trained designers of diverse nuclear power installations.
In appreciation of his valuable contribution in development of national nuclear power, Academician Dollezhal was endowed with numerous Soviet state awards of the highest rank. He was the winner of the Lenin Prize and five times winner of the State Prize of the USSR. The last of his many awards were given to him by Russian Government and Russian Academy of Sciences in 1999-2000.
A patriarch among Russian academicians, Nikolay Dollezhal kept his involvement in NIKIET activities till the very last days of his life, generously sharing his formidable knowledge with his successors and helping nuclear specialists address new challenges of rapidly advancing science and engineering.
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