Zhiritskii, Georgii

Born Sept. 26, (Oct. 8), 1893, in the village of Krapivna, in present-day Shchekino Raion, Tula Oblast; died June 4, 1966, in Kazan. Soviet heat engineer, professor (1934), doctor of technical sciences (1937), Honored Worker in Science and Technology of the RSFSR (1963) and of the Tatar ASSR (1953).

Zhiritskii graduated from Kiev Polytechnic Institute in 1915. He taught there (to 1929) and at the Moscow Higher Technical School (1920–30). During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 he was deputy head designer at a design bureau working on new technology. From 1946 to 1966 he was a subdepartmental head at the Kazan Institute of Aviation. He worked mainly on steam engines, steam and gas turbines, jet engines, and heat engineering. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Badge of Honor. In 1966 one of the craters on the moon was named after him.