Polenov, Konstantin Pavlovich

Born July 25 (Aug. 6), 1835, in Kostroma Province; died Jan. 13 (26), 1908, in Ekaterinburg (present-day Sverdlovsk). Russian metallurgist. Son of a provincial secretary.

Polenov graduated from Moscow University in 1856 and from the Nikolai Academy of the General Staff in St. Petersburg in 1858. After resigning from the service, he worked for approximately 40 years in the Urals, in the Visim-Shaitanka metallurgical plant (from 1862 to 1864) and the Nizhniaia Salda metallurgical plant thereafter. He proposed and introduced (1864) the manufacture of rails made of high-strength iron, as opposed to rails with a steel head. In 1875 and 1876 he developed and introduced a new variation of the Bessemer process for low-silicon cast iron. This process, called the Russian Bessemer process, made use of preliminary preheating in a reverberatory furnace. In 1882, Polenov became the first metallurgist in Russia to use Cowper’s air-heating apparatus. He introduced in Russia the technique of cutting hot rails “to dimensions” with the aid of a photometer.