Mikhail Polievktovich Kostenko

Born Dec. 16 (28), 1889, in the village of Veidelevka, present-day Valuiki Raion, Belgorod Oblast. Soviet electrical engineer; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953; corresponding member 1939). Hero of Socialist Labor (1969). Son of a country doctor.

After graduating in 1918 from the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute, Kostenko remained there to teach (he became a professor in 1933). From 1939 to 1950 he was director of the laboratory of the Power Engineering Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; from 1951 to 1955 he was head of the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Automation and Remote Control of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; from 1955 to 1966 he was the director of the Institute of Electromechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (Leningrad). From 1957 to 1963 he was a member of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Kostenko’s principal works deal with the theory of electrical machines and methods for their experimental study and design. He gave a summary of the theory of transformers and of multiphase induction motors and commutator machines and developed an original circuit for an AC commutator generator. He is working on problems of AC electric traction, the electrodynamic simulation of power systems in connection with problems of stability in long-distance power transmission, and also questions regarding the transformation of alternating current to direct current. He was a deputy to the fifth convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He has been awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1949 and 1951) and the Lenin Prize (1958). He was awarded three Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and medals.