Konstantin Konstantinovich Khrenov

Born Feb. 13 (25), 1894, in Borovsk, in what is now Kaluga Oblast. Soviet specialist in electric welding. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953). Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1945). Member of the CPSU since 1955.

Khrenov graduated from the Petrograd Electrical Engineering Institute in 1918. He taught at the Leningrad Electrical Engineering Institute from 1921 to 1925, at the Moscow Electromechanical Institute of Railroad Transportation Engineers from 1928 to 1947 (becoming a professor in 1933), and at the Moscow Higher Technical School from 1931 to 1947. He was a staff member of the Institute of Electric Welding of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR from 1945 to 1948, the Institute of Structural Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (now the Institute of Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR) from 1948 to 1952, and the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (now the Institute of Electrodynamics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR) from 1952 to 1963. Khrenov also worked at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute from 1947 to 1958. He joined the staff of the Institute of Electric Welding of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1963.

Khrenov’s principal works are devoted to problems associated with the electric welding of metals. He has devised methods for underwater electric welding and cutting of metals and has developed arc- and resistance-welder power supplies, ceramic fluxes, and electrode coatings as well as techniques for cold welding, gas-pressure welding, and plasma-arc cutting. Khrenov helped organize a training program for Soviet welding engineers. He has received the State Prize of the USSR in 1946 and has been awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, three other orders, and various medals.