Kirill Shchelkin

Born May 4 (17), 1911; died Nov. 8, 1968, in Moscow. Soviet physicist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953). Three times Hero of Socialist Labor. Member of the CPSU from 1940.

After graduating from the Crimean Pedagogical Institute in Simferopol’ in 1932, Shchelkin worked at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was also a professor at the Moscow Institute of Engineering Physics. Shchelkin’s main works were devoted to the physics of combustion and explosion. Shchelkin proved that the influence of the flow turbulence of the initial mixture on the process of flame acceleration is significant. He developed the concept of the transition of slow combustion to detonation and experimentally investigated combustion in a turbulent flow. He showed that upon artificially inducing turbulence in a mixture that is incapable of detonation, the flame propagation velocities are close to the detonation velocities. Shchelkin proposed the theory of spin detonation.

Shchelkin was awarded four Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals. He was a laureate of the Lenin Prize and four State Prizes of the USSR.