Nikolai Briling

Born Oct. 1 (13), 1876, in Moscow; died there Mar. 15, 1961. Soviet specialist on motor vehicle construction, internal-combustion engines, and heat engineering. A corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953).

While he was a student at the Moscow Technical College (MVTU), Briling was twice subjected to arrest and exile for distributing the Leninist Iskra. In 1907 he defended his doctoral dissertation Steam Turbine Rotor Blade Losses, in which all the factors that determine the efficiency of steam turbine rotors were elucidated for the first time. He began teaching at the Moscow Technical College in 1908, where a training program for specialists in transport engines was begun in 1915 on his initiative. In 1932 he became a professor at the Moscow Road Transport Institute. Briling’s best-known works are Internal-combustion Engines (1911; 3rd ed., 1935) and Investigation of Diesel Engine Operation and Heat Transfer (1931), in which he presented new formulas for heat transfer ratings and developed a new heat calculation method for internal-combustion engines. A number of original automobile and aviation engines and one of the aerosleigh models were constructed under Briling’s guidance. Briling took part in the development of the NAMI-1, the first Soviet compact car. He also wrote works on the calculation and design of oil and gas pipelines. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.