Millionshchikov, Mikhail Dmitrievich

Born Jan. 3 (16), 1913, in Groznyi; died May 27, 1973, in Moscow. Soviet scientist and public figure; specialist in mechanics and applied physics. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1962; corresponding member, 1953), vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (from 1962), Hero of Socialist Labor (1967). Became a member of the CPSU in 1947.

Millionshchikov graduated from the Groznyi Petroleum Institute in 1932. He taught at the Moscow Institute of Aviation (1934–43) and then at the Moscow Physical Engineering Institute (he became a professor in 1949). From 1944 to 1949 he worked at the Institute of Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and later at the Institute of Atomic Energy (he became its deputy director in 1960).

Millionshchikov’s major work concerns the theory of turbulence, filtration, and applied gas dynamics. He solved the problem of attenuation of isotropic turbulence. He proposed a new method of exploiting petroleum-bearing beds and studied gas ejectors and their uses. He also did important work in nuclear engineering.

Millionshchikov was chairman of the seventh and eighth con-vocations of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. He became chairman of the Editorial and Publishing Council of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1966 and a member of the Chief Editorial Board of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia in 1967. He became chairman of the Soviet Pugwash Committee in 1964. In 1968 he was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, in 1971, a foreign member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1951 and 1954 and the Lenin Prize in 1961. He was awarded five Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, two other orders, and medals.