Stechkin, Boris

Born July 24 (Aug. 5), 1891, in the vilage of Trufanovo, in what is now Tula Oblast; died Apr. 2,1969, in Moscow. Soviet scientist in hydroaeromechanics and heat engineering. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953; corresponding member, 1946). Hero of Socialist Labor (1961).

A student of N.E. Zhukovskii, Stechkin graduated from the Moscow Higher Technical School in 1918. Together with Zhukovskii, he participated in the founding of the Central Aero-hydrodynamics Institute. Stechkin was one of the organizers of the N.E. Zhukovskii Air Force Engineering Academy and was a professor there from 1921 to 1953. He taught at the Moscow Higher Technical School from 1918 to 1927 and at the Moscow Institute of Aviation from 1933 to 1937. He was director of the engine laboratory at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1954 to 1961, when the laboratory was reorganized into the academy’s Institute of Engines; Stechkin was director of the institute in 1961 and 1962. Beginning in 1954, Stechkin was also a professor at the Moscow Automotive Institute. He also headed a commission on gas turbines sponsored by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Stechkin developed a theory for the thermal analysis of aircraft engines and the construction of sea-level and altitude performance curves for engines. His formulas for evaluating engine performance through air flow and for determining the coefficient of charge and the indicated efficiency of engines are widely used. In publishing the Theory of the Air-breathing Jet Engine in 1929, he became the first to propose the theory of air-breathing jet motion.

Stechkin received the State Prize of the USSR in 1946 and the Lenin Prize in 1957. He was also awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and several medals.