Valentin Vologdin

Born Mar. 10 (22), 1881, in Kuvinskii Zavod, now in Perm’ Oblast; died Apr. 23, 1953, in Leningrad. Soviet scientist in high-frequency technology. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939); Honored Worker in Science and Technology of the RSFSR (1942). Graduated from the St. Petersburg Technological Institute in 1907.

In 1921, Vologdin became a professor at the University of Nizhny Novgorod. In 1923 he was made director of the Low-current Factory Trust. From 1947 he was the manager of a scientific research institute in Leningrad for the industrial application of high-frequency currents. Vologdin was one of the founders (in 1918) of the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory, where the powerful high-frequency generators of his system were developed. He designed the world’s first high-voltage mercury rectifiers (in 1919, with a liquid cathode in a glass construction; and in 1930, high-capacity rectifiers in a metal version), put forth a theory of their operation, and proposed connection diagrams. The technology of fast soldering with high-frequency heating currents was developed in 1930 under his direction, as was a method for the surface hardening of steel in 1935. In 1948 the Academy of Sciences of the USSR awarded him the first A. S. Popov Gold Medal. He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1943 and 1952. He was also awarded the Order of Lenin.