Paton, Evgenii Oskarovich

Born Feb. 20 (Mar. 4), 1870, in Nice; died Aug. 12, 1953, in Kiev. Soviet scientist and specialist in welding and bridge building. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1929) and the academy’s vice-president (1945–52); Hero of Socialist Labor (1943). Member of the CPSU from 1944.

Paton graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Dresden in 1894 and from the St. Petersburg Institute of Railroad Engineers in 1896 and then worked on the Russian railroads. Starting in 1898 he taught at the Moscow Engineering School, and in 1905 he became a professor at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. Between 1921 and 1931 he headed the Kiev Bridge Testing Station. After 1929, Paton worked on the technology of electric welding. On his initiative, a welding laboratory was organized at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1934 the laboratory became the Research Institute of Electric Welding. In 1945 it was renamed the E. O. Paton Research Institute of Electric Welding after Paton, the director of the institute since its inception.

Paton’s principal works on electric welding were concerned with the automation of welding processes, the development of a method of flux-cored arc welding, and the strength of welded joints. He also worked on methods of welding special-purpose steels and helped introduce new welding methods in industry. Paton collaborated on the planning and development of the first welding production lines and on the creation of automatic welding equipment. He helped devise industrial methods of welding pipes, pipeline networks, and tanks for liquids and gases. Under Paton’s supervision, an all-welded bridge—named in his honor —was constructed across the Dnieper at Kiev in 1953.

Paton wrote the world’s first monograph on flux-cored arc welding (Automatic Welding With a Bare Electrode Under A Layer of Flux, 1940). He was the organizer and editor of the journal Avtomaticheskaia svarka. A deputy to the second and third convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Paton was awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1941), two Orders of Lenin, four other orders, and various medals.