Ivan Grave

Born Nov. 13 (25), 1874, in Kazan; died Mar. 3, 1960, in Moscow. Soviet artillery expert, doctor of engineering sciences (1939), professor (1927), member of the Academy of Artillery Sciences (1947–53), major general of the engineering-technological service (1942).

Grave graduated from the Mikhail Artillery School in 1895 and the Mikhail Artillery Academy in 1900. in which he began to teach in 1904 (becoming a colonel in 1912). In 1916 he invented a combat rocket with smokeless powder—the prototype of the later reactive shell. In 1918 he participated in organizing the Artillery Academy of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, in which he worked until 1943 as head of the teaching department and head of a subdepartment. Grave was one of the creators of the Soviet school of internal ballistics. He is the author of the fundamental work Internal Ballistics (fascs. l-[5], 1933–38) and the work Ballistics of a Semienclosed Space (1940). In 1942 he received the State Prize of the USSR. He was also awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Patriotic War First Class, the Order of the Red Star, and medals.